Legal fees for a standard freehold purchase in England and Wales run roughly £800 to £1,900 in 2026, and £600 to £1,300 to sell. Add the third-party costs your solicitor pays on your behalf and an all-in freehold purchase usually lands between £1,200 and £2,800. A survey of 100 firms this year put the average freehold purchase at £1,389 including VAT and the average freehold sale at £1,316.
Those two numbers, the legal fee and the disbursements, are where nearly all the confusion lives. A quote showing £650 and a quote showing £1,450 can describe the same job, because one includes the searches and the other does not. This guide separates the two properly, lists what each third-party cost actually is, and covers the extras that tend to appear after you have already instructed someone.
Quick answer: Budget £1,200 to £2,500 all-in for a freehold purchase and £900 to £1,600 for a freehold sale. Leasehold adds £150 to £300. Buying and selling together commonly totals around £2,400. Stamp Duty is separate and is never part of a conveyancing quote. Get three written quotes and check each one states whether disbursements are included.
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Typical costs for each type of transaction
| Transaction | Legal fee only | All-in with third-party costs | Why it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freehold purchase | £800 to £1,900 | £1,200 to £2,500 | Searches, Land Registry and lender work all apply |
| Freehold sale | £600 to £1,300 | £900 to £1,600 | No searches and no Stamp Duty, so fewer costs |
| Leasehold purchase | £1,200 to £2,200 plus VAT | £1,600 to £2,800 | Lease review, management pack and freeholder fees |
| Buying and selling together | Two fees, sometimes discounted | Around £2,400 | Two full transactions running in parallel |
| Remortgage only | £300 to £600 | Around £780 including VAT | No transfer of ownership, much less work |
| Property over £750,000 | Higher across the board | Scales with value | More complexity and greater indemnity exposure |
Selling is consistently cheaper than buying because a seller commissions no searches, pays no Land Registry registration fee and owes no Stamp Duty. If you are doing both, expect two separate bills rather than one, though many firms discount the pair.
What the third-party costs actually are
Disbursements are pass-through costs your solicitor pays to other organisations on your behalf. They are not profit and you would pay them whoever handled the work, which is why comparing a quote that includes them against one that does not is meaningless.
| Item | Typical cost | Who it goes to | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local authority search | Under £100 to over £300, averaging around £250 | The local council | Planning decisions, road adoption, enforcement notices, conservation area status |
| Environmental search | £40 to £70 | Search provider | Contamination and flood risk history |
| Water and drainage search | £50 to £80 | Water authority | Where the drains run and who maintains them |
| Land Registry fee | Scales with price, electronic is cheaper | HM Land Registry | Registers you as the new owner |
| Land Registry title documents | A few pounds each | HM Land Registry | Title plan and register entries |
| Bank transfer fee | £25 to £45 | The bank | Sending completion funds |
| Anti-money laundering checks | £10 to £30 per person | Verification provider | Statutory identity checks |
| Leasehold management pack | £150 to £500 | Freeholder or managing agent | Service charge accounts and lease information |
The local authority search is the one with the widest spread, because every council prices its own. It is also the one most worth having rather than replacing with a cheaper personal search, since a regulated search carries recourse if something is missed.
Note that most firms now submit Land Registry applications electronically, which attracts a lower rate than postal submission. If a quote shows a postal rate, ask why.
How a cheap quote becomes an expensive bill
The common tactic is not inventing charges. It is stripping work that almost every transaction needs out of the headline figure and adding it back as a supplement once you have instructed. Leasehold, a mortgage, a new build or a gifted deposit each become a line item rather than part of the job.
- Leasehold supplement. £150 to £300. Reasonable in itself, but it should be in the quote if you have said the property is leasehold.
- Mortgage or lender fee. Charged for acting for your lender as well as you. Applies to almost every buyer with a mortgage.
- Gifted deposit fee. Extra checks where a family member contributes. Very common among first-time buyers.
- New build supplement. Tighter developer deadlines and additional documentation.
- Help to Buy or shared ownership. Additional scheme paperwork.
- Expedited search fee. Paid to jump a council’s normal turnaround.
- Indemnity insurance policy. Where consents or certificates are missing.
- Telegraphic transfer fees. Sometimes charged per transfer rather than once.
None of these is illegitimate. The problem is comparability. When you request quotes, state up front whether the property is freehold or leasehold, whether you have a mortgage and with whom, whether any deposit is gifted, and whether it is a new build. A firm that then still omits the relevant supplement has given you a quote you can hold them to.
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No sale no fee, and what it really protects
No sale no fee waives the solicitor’s own charge if the transaction collapses. It does not usually refund disbursements already spent, because that money has gone to councils and search providers who will not return it. Expect to lose the search costs regardless.
A meaningful share of agreed sales fall through in England and Wales, which makes this genuinely worth having rather than a marketing line. What matters is reading the conditions. Some policies only apply where the collapse is outside your control, meaning that changing your mind can leave the full fee payable.
Ask three specific questions before instructing. Does the protection cover a withdrawal by either side or only by the other party? Are disbursements refunded, retained, or transferred to a subsequent purchase? And is there an abortive fee that applies instead of the full charge, which is a common middle position.
The transferability point is the most useful. Some firms will carry unused search fees over to your next purchase within a set period, which materially reduces the cost of a second attempt after a chain collapse.
What the fee actually buys, stage by stage
A standard freehold purchase runs eight to twelve weeks from instruction to completion. The legal fee covers roughly five distinct stages, and the one that most often stalls is enquiries, where your solicitor is waiting on answers from the other side rather than doing anything you can chase.
Understanding the stages helps because it tells you when a delay is your solicitor and when it is not. Firms get blamed for weeks that were actually spent waiting on a council search or a managing agent, and equally, genuine slowness gets excused as “that is just how conveyancing works”.
Instruction and identity checks take a few days. You provide identification, the source of your deposit is verified, and the initial payment is taken. Delays here are almost always down to paperwork you have not returned.
Searches and the draft contract follow. Searches are ordered immediately and the local authority one governs the timetable, because council turnaround varies from days to several weeks depending on the authority. This is dead time you cannot compress except by paying an expedited fee, and it is worth asking your solicitor which council and what their current turnaround is.
Enquiries is the longest and least predictable stage. Your solicitor raises questions arising from the contract, the searches and the property information forms, and the seller’s solicitor answers them. Each round trip can take a week or more, and a property with missing consents or an unclear boundary generates several rounds. This is where a responsive firm earns its fee, by chasing rather than waiting.
Exchange is the point at which the transaction becomes binding and the completion date is fixed. Everything before it can collapse without cost beyond disbursements. Everything after it cannot. This is why the survey and any renegotiation must be resolved before exchange rather than after.
Completion and registration closes it out. Funds transfer, keys are released, Stamp Duty is submitted and the Land Registry is updated. Registration itself can take months at the Land Registry’s end without affecting your ownership or your ability to move in.
The practical takeaway for anyone booking removals: do not commit to a moving date until exchange. An agreed completion date before exchange is an intention, not a commitment, and removals booked against it can need moving. Our guide to what actually happens on completion day covers how the two timetables interact.
Comparing three quotes properly
We took the components that appear across published 2026 quotes and built a comparison structure, because the single biggest saving here comes from comparing like with like rather than from finding the cheapest firm.
| Ask each firm | Why it matters | A weak answer |
|---|---|---|
| Is this a fixed fee or an estimate? | Estimates rise after instruction | “It should be around that” |
| Does the figure include all disbursements? | The single largest source of quote mismatch | Disbursements listed as “to be confirmed” |
| Is VAT included in the figures shown? | A 20 percent difference on the legal fee | Prices shown without stating either way |
| What supplements apply to my specific case? | Leasehold, mortgage, gifted deposit, new build | “We would have to look at the file” |
| Who will actually handle the file? | Named contact against a rotating call centre | No named individual offered |
| What happens if it falls through? | Determines your downside | Vague reference to a policy without detail |
| Are you SRA or CLC regulated? | Regulation is what makes recourse possible | Anything other than a straight yes |
Two findings stood out. First, the spread between the cheapest and dearest genuine like-for-like quote is usually a few hundred pounds, which is real but small against a purchase, and it is routinely outweighed by how quickly a firm responds to enquiries. A slow conveyancer costs you weeks and can cost you the property.
Second, the location of the firm makes no legal difference in England and Wales, provided it is regulated by the SRA or the CLC. Choosing local for its own sake narrows the field for no benefit. What matters is regulation, a named contact, and a genuine fixed fee.
Figures are indicative 2026 UK ranges drawn from published firm pricing and industry surveys, and vary with property value, tenure and region. Scotland operates a different system.
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Scotland and Northern Ireland work differently
Scotland uses a separate system with different terminology and a different point of commitment. Offers are made through solicitors, the binding stage is conclusion of missives rather than exchange of contracts, and the seller provides a Home Report before marketing.
Practically, that changes both the cost profile and the risk. Scottish buyers do not commission their own survey as a matter of course because the Home Report is already available, and the equivalent of gazumping is far less common because commitment happens earlier in the process.
Scottish solicitors also frequently act as estate agents, so the fee structure can bundle marketing and legal work in a way that has no direct English equivalent. Comparing a Scottish quote against an English one line by line does not work, and figures quoted in this guide should be treated as applying to England and Wales.
Northern Ireland runs its own system again, with its own land registry arrangements and its own professional bodies. If you are buying there, take advice locally rather than applying guidance written for the English market.
Wales shares the English conveyancing process but has its own property tax, Land Transaction Tax, with different bands and thresholds from Stamp Duty Land Tax. The legal fees are comparable; the tax is not.
When the cheapest firm is the wrong choice
Avoid the lowest quote where you are in a chain with a fixed deadline, buying leasehold with a short lease or complex service charge position, or buying anything with missing consents. Volume operators price for straightforward files and struggle with the rest.
Comparison sites rank on price because price is the sortable field. It is the wrong primary criterion for a service where the main risk is delay rather than cost.
Leasehold is where this bites hardest. A leasehold purchase requires reading the lease properly, chasing a managing agent for a pack that often takes weeks, and understanding whether a major works consultation is pending. A firm handling a high caseload at a low fee has limited incentive to chase, and the delay lands on you.
The other case is a short chain with a hard completion date. Paying £300 more for a firm that answers the phone is straightforwardly worth it when the alternative is losing a purchase. Weigh that against the rest of your moving house costs, and remember the survey and Stamp Duty sit outside this figure entirely.
How EcoGreen Movers fits into the timeline
Conveyancing sets your moving date, and conveyancing rarely runs to plan. EcoGreen Movers quotes on a fixed basis and holds dates through the normal turbulence of a chain, using reusable crates rather than disposable cardboard so nothing is wasted if a date moves.
We handle residential moves across the UK, including London, Manchester and Edinburgh. For what happens on the day itself, see our guide to completion day, or get in touch for a quote.
Frequently asked questions
Who pays, the buyer or the seller?
Both, separately. Each side instructs its own solicitor and pays its own legal costs, and neither contributes to the other’s. Buyers pay more because of searches, lender work and Land Registry registration, none of which a seller incurs.
Is Stamp Duty part of the quote?
No. Stamp Duty Land Tax in England, or Land Transaction Tax in Wales, is a separate tax your solicitor submits and pays on your behalf at completion. It is never included in a conveyancing fee and can dwarf it, so budget for it independently.
Why does leasehold cost more?
Typically £150 to £300 more, because the lease must be read and reported on, a management pack obtained from the freeholder or managing agent, and service charge and ground rent positions checked. The management pack itself is a further £150 to £500 paid to the freeholder.
When is payment due?
Usually an initial payment on instruction to cover searches and early administration, with the balance settled at completion out of the transaction funds. Ask for the payment schedule in writing, since the up-front element varies considerably between firms.
Does using a local firm help?
Not legally, in England and Wales. Any firm regulated by the SRA or CLC can act anywhere. Responsiveness, a named contact and a genuine fixed fee matter far more than the office being nearby, and restricting yourself geographically narrows the field for no gain.
In summary: compare all-in, not headline
Budget £1,200 to £2,500 all-in to buy a freehold and £900 to £1,600 to sell, with leasehold adding £150 to £300 plus a management pack. Get three written quotes, tell each firm the full circumstances of your transaction, and insist every figure states whether disbursements and VAT are included.
Then weight your decision on responsiveness rather than the last hundred pounds. The cost of a slow conveyancer is measured in weeks of delay and occasionally in a lost purchase, which is a far larger number than the gap between quotes.
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