How Much Are Solicitor Fees When Moving House?

The bill that surprises people is rarely the removal van. It is the one from the solicitor — and it usually arrives with a list of charges nobody explained in advance. In short: expect roughly £800–£1,900 in legal fees to buy, £600–£1,300 to sell, plus around £700 in third-party disbursements. If you are buying and selling at once, budget £2,500–£3,500 all in, and more for a leasehold flat. Here is what every line on that bill actually pays for.

How much are solicitor fees when moving house?

There are two halves to the bill, and mixing them up is what makes quotes so hard to compare. The first is the legal fee — the solicitor or licensed conveyancer’s own charge for the work. For a straightforward freehold purchase that typically falls between £800 and £1,900, and for a sale between £600 and £1,300. Licensed conveyancers usually sit at the lower end of those ranges, solicitors at the higher end.

The second half is disbursements: money your solicitor collects from you and pays straight out to somebody else. The HomeOwners Alliance puts these at around £700 or more on a typical purchase. Put the two together and moving home while buying and selling at the same time usually lands somewhere between £2,500 and £3,500 in legal costs, before a penny of stamp duty.

What are disbursements, and why are they on your bill?

Disbursements are the charges that make a quote balloon after you have already agreed it, so it helps to know them by name. On a purchase they usually include local authority searches (roughly £100–£450 depending on the council), a water and drainage search (£40–£80), an environmental search (£40–£70), a bankruptcy search, a Land Registry priority search, and the Land Registry registration fee itself, which rises with the price of the property and can run from around £40 to several hundred pounds.

There are smaller ones too: anti-money-laundering and identity checks, a source-of-funds check, and a CHAPS bank transfer fee of £20–£50 for sending the money on completion day. None of these are your solicitor’s profit — they are pass-through costs you would pay whoever handled the work. That is exactly why a quote showing only the legal fee is not really a quote at all.

Why are some conveyancing quotes so much cheaper than others?

A headline price of £400 and a headline price of £1,400 are often quoting different things. The cheap one may exclude searches, exclude the Land Registry fee, exclude leasehold work, or add a supplement for a mortgage, a gifted deposit, a new build or a shared-ownership purchase. By the time those are added back, the gap narrows sharply.

The fix is simple and it takes one email. Ask for a written quote that lists the legal fee, every disbursement, and VAT separately, and ask directly what is not included. Then check whether the firm offers a no-sale-no-fee arrangement — roughly one in four agreed sales in the UK falls through, and it matters whether you would still owe the full bill if yours does. Read what that promise actually covers, because disbursements already spent are rarely refunded.

When do you actually pay your solicitor?

You do not pay it all at the end, which catches a lot of people out. Most firms ask for money on account near the start — usually £250–£500 — so they can order searches and run identity checks. That money is spent early, and it is the part you are least likely to get back if the sale collapses.

The rest is settled on completion, along with your stamp duty and the balance of the purchase price. Your solicitor sends a completion statement beforehand setting out every figure. Read it properly rather than skimming it. If a charge on it was never in the original quote, that is the moment to ask about it, not after the money has moved.

What makes solicitor fees higher than average?

Complexity is what you are really paying for. A leasehold flat is the big one: expect around £300 more in legal fees, plus a leasehold supplement and, if you are selling, a management pack from the freeholder or managing agent that can cost £300–£800 on its own. Notices served on the freeholder after completion add more again.

Other things that push the bill up are new-build purchases with tight developer deadlines, shared ownership, unregistered land, a property bought at auction, a help-to-buy loan to redeem, and higher-value homes, since Land Registry fees scale with price. London moves tend to sit at the upper end of every range simply because values are higher and flats are more common than houses.

How do solicitor fees fit into the rest of your moving budget?

Legal fees are one line in a much longer list. Stamp duty is usually the largest single cost when you buy, and beyond that come the survey, the mortgage arrangement fee, the estate agent’s commission on your sale, and the removal itself. Our stamp duty calculator will give you that figure in a few seconds, which is the fastest way to see the real shape of your budget.

The removal is the part you can pin down early and precisely. We give a fixed, all-in quote rather than an hourly estimate that drifts on the day, and every one of our vans is ULEZ-compliant, so no ULEZ charge is ever passed on to you. Where a parking bay suspension is needed we arrange it, with the council’s fee passed through at cost. We are fully insured, ISO accredited and SafeContractor Approved — and with at least a week’s notice, usually more like two to four weeks for the best choice of dates, the moving side of your budget stops being a guess.