How Much Are UK Conveyancing Fees? (2026 Breakdown)

In 2026, UK conveyancing typically costs £600–£1,300 to sell a freehold home and £800–£1,900 to buy one in solicitor's legal fees. Add disbursements — searches, Land Registry registration, bank transfers — and an all-in freehold purchase usually lands at £1,200–£2,500. Selling is cheaper because the seller orders no searches, pays no Stamp Duty and pays no Land Registry registration fee at all. Leasehold adds roughly £150–£300 either side. The legal fee carries 20% VAT; HM Land Registry fees and Stamp Duty do not.

What conveyancing fees actually are — and the two halves nobody separates properly

Conveyancing is the legal work that moves a property from one owner to another: checking the title, raising and answering enquiries, drafting and exchanging contracts, handling the money on completion and registering the change of ownership. It is done by a solicitor regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority or by a licensed conveyancer regulated by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. Both can do the job. Neither is automatically cheaper.

Every quote you receive splits into two parts, and confusing them is how sellers end up furious at completion.

The legal fee is what the firm charges for its own time. It carries 20% VAT. It is the part that is genuinely competitive between firms, and the part a firm can flex.

The disbursements are third-party costs the conveyancer pays on your behalf and passes straight through: search fees to the local authority and search providers, the registration fee to HM Land Registry, bank transfer charges, identity and anti-money-laundering checks. Some carry VAT, some do not. No firm can discount them, because they are not the firm's money.

When a quote looks suspiciously cheap, it is nearly always because the legal fee has been advertised alone and the disbursements are sitting in a schedule further down the page — or, worse, in an email you receive three weeks later.

How much are conveyancing fees in 2026? The headline numbers

Here are the ranges that hold across the market this year. They assume a normal residential transaction on a property of average UK value, with no unusual complications.

Transaction (2026, inc VAT)	Typical legal fee
Selling, freehold	~£600–£1,300
Buying, freehold	~£800–£1,900
Selling, leasehold	~£150–£300 more than freehold
Buying, leasehold	~£150–£300 more than freehold
Selling and buying together	Both fees, though many firms discount the pair

Selling is cheaper than buying for a simple structural reason: the buyer's side carries the searches, the mortgage lender's requirements, the Stamp Duty return and the registration. A seller's conveyancer is mainly proving title, completing the property information forms and answering enquiries. Less work, lower fee.

The spread within each range is driven by four things: the value of the property (most firms band their fees), whether it is leasehold, whether there is a mortgage involved on either side, and where the firm is. Central London firms charge more than firms in Bradford. That is not a scandal, it is rent and salaries.

A worked example: a £280,000 freehold sale and a £340,000 freehold purchase

Say you are selling a three-bed semi for £280,000 and buying a detached house for £340,000, both freehold, both with a mortgage. A realistic 2026 bill looks like this.

Line	Sale (£280,000)	Purchase (£340,000)
Legal fee (inc VAT)	£950	£1,250
Local authority search	—	£180
Drainage & water search	—	£65
Environmental search	—	£45
Land Registry office copies	£12	—
Land Registry registration fee	—	£150 (electronic, transfer of whole)
Bank transfer fees	£35	£35
ID & AML checks	£20	£20
Stamp Duty return submission	—	Usually included
Total legal costs	£1,017	£1,745

Combined: £2,762 for both sides of the move, before Stamp Duty itself and before estate agent commission. That is the number people do not budget for. It sits inside the wider cost of selling a house, alongside estate agent fees, EPC and removals.

Disbursements — the extra costs on a purchase, itemised

Disbursements are almost entirely a buyer's problem. Here is what they typically cost in 2026.

Disbursement	Typical 2026 cost	Who pays	VAT?
Local authority search	£100–£250	Buyer	Usually yes
Drainage & water search	£50–£80	Buyer	Yes
Environmental search	£35–£60	Buyer	Yes
Chancel / mining / flood (area-specific)	£20–£60 each	Buyer	Yes
Land Registry registration fee	£20–£1,105 (see scale below)	Buyer only	No
Land Registry office copies / title deeds	£6–£12 per document	Either	Yes
Bank transfer (CHAPS) fee	£25–£40 per transfer	Either	Yes
ID & anti-money-laundering checks	£6–£30 per person	Either	Yes
Bankruptcy search (per borrower)	£2–£6	Buyer	Yes
Leasehold supplement	£150–£300	Either (leasehold only)	Yes
Leasehold management pack	£150–£800	Seller (leasehold only)	Yes
Stamp Duty Land Tax	Depends on price and buyer status	Buyer	No

This is why an all-in freehold purchase typically totals £1,200–£2,500 while the advertised legal fee might have been £700.

One warning on searches. The local authority search range above is what a competent firm should be paying in most of the country, but search fees are set council by council and a handful of authorities charge considerably more — some search packs reach £400 or beyond. If your quote shows a search figure well above the range here, ask which council and which search provider. It is a fair question and a good firm will answer it in a sentence.

The HM Land Registry fee scale — the number almost every guide gets wrong

This is worth doing properly, because it is the single most misreported figure in UK conveyancing content. The registration fee is not a solicitor's charge and it is not negotiable. It is set by statute under the Land Registration Fee Order 2021 and published by HM Land Registry. It is paid by the buyer only — a seller never pays it — and it is not subject to VAT.

Crucially, there are two columns, not one. Applications lodged electronically through the HM Land Registry portal or Business Gateway attract a reduced fee — a 55% cut against the postal rate — but that reduction applies only to a transfer or surrender of the whole of a registered title. Transfers of part, and registrations of new leases, pay the full Scale 1 rate whether they are filed electronically or not.

Property value	Postal (Scale 1)	Electronic — transfer of whole	Voluntary first registration
£0–£80,000	£45	£20	£30
£80,001–£100,000	£95	£40	£70
£100,001–£200,000	£230	£100	£170
£200,001–£500,000	£330	£150	£250
£500,001–£1,000,000	£655	£295	£495
£1,000,001 and over	£1,105	£500	£830

Source: HM Land Registry, Registration services fees (Land Registration Fee Order 2021).

Two practical consequences. First, if you are buying at £340,000 and your quote shows £330 for registration rather than £150, your conveyancer is planning to file on paper — or has simply copied the wrong column. Ask. Second, if a guide tells you the fee is "£200 to £300" or quotes a single figure for a £300,000 purchase, it is not reading the scale. There is no single figure. There are two columns and six bands.

VAT: why "£1,200" and "£1,200 plus VAT" are £240 apart

Almost nobody explains this, and it causes more arguments than any other line on a completion statement.

VAT at 20% applies to the firm's legal fee and to most search and check fees. It does not apply to HM Land Registry statutory fees, and it does not apply to Stamp Duty Land Tax, because those are not supplies of services — they are payments to government.

So a quote of "£1,200 including VAT" for the legal element means the firm is earning £1,000. A quote of "£1,200 plus VAT" means it is earning £1,200 and you are paying £1,440. Same headline number, £240 apart. When you compare quotes, force every firm onto the same basis: total payable, VAT included, disbursements included. If a firm will not give you that figure in writing, that tells you something.

Why leasehold costs more

A leasehold transaction is more legal work, not a surcharge for its own sake. The conveyancer has to review the lease itself — its length, the ground rent provisions, the service charge mechanism, any restrictions on subletting or alterations — and then obtain and read the management pack from the freeholder or managing agent.

That pack is a seller cost, and it is the one that surprises people. Managing agents charge what they like for it, commonly £150–£800, and they are under no meaningful obligation to be quick about it. On the buyer's side there are notices of transfer and of charge to serve after completion, each attracting a fee set by the lease. Deeds of covenant and certificates of compliance can add more.

The result is the £150–£300 leasehold supplement on the legal fee, plus those third-party costs on top. If the lease is short, expect further work again — see our guides on selling a leasehold property and freehold versus leasehold for a quick sale.

Fixed fee, hourly rate, and "no sale, no fee" — what each really commits to

A fixed fee is the clearest structure and the market standard for straightforward residential work. But "fixed" applies to the legal fee only. Disbursements sit outside it, and so do supplements: leasehold, new build, shared ownership, gifted deposit, Help to Buy, unregistered title, expedited completion. A firm quoting £595 fixed with eight possible supplements is not really quoting a fixed fee at all.

Hourly billing is rare in residential conveyancing and you should treat it as a red flag unless the transaction is genuinely unusual — a contested title, a complex probate, a portfolio.

"No sale, no fee" is the one that needs unpicking. It means the firm waives its own legal fee if the transaction collapses before completion. It does not refund what has already been spent with third parties. If searches have been ordered, you owe for the searches. If you paid money on account — commonly £250–£500 at the outset — some of that is likely gone. Some firms also apply an abortive or administration charge that sits outside the guarantee.

Ask the question directly, before you instruct: "If this falls through the week before exchange, what is my total bill?" A straight answer is a good sign. A vague one is a good reason to go elsewhere.

What a fall-through actually costs you — the question nobody answers

Around a third of UK sales agreed on the open market never reach completion. That is not an obscure risk, it is the base case for roughly one seller in three, and it is where conveyancing costs quietly compound.

Here is what you are realistically exposed to when a purchase collapses at, say, the enquiries stage:

• Searches already ordered: £150–£350, non-refundable once the provider has run them.
• Money on account not yet spent: usually returned, but check the engagement letter.
• Abortive or administration fee: £100–£300 at some firms, even under "no sale, no fee".
• Mortgage valuation and arrangement fees: paid to the lender, not the conveyancer, and often gone.
• Survey: gone entirely.

And if you go again on a different property, you buy the searches again. Most search results have a practical shelf life of around six months and lenders will not accept stale ones, though search indemnity insurance can sometimes bridge a short gap on a re-run purchase. Ask your conveyancer whether anything is reusable before you pay twice.

This is the real financial argument for caring about buyer quality rather than headline price. A collapsed chain does not just cost you time — see what to do when a chain collapses.

When do you actually pay conveyancing fees?

You do not hand over the whole amount on day one, and you should be suspicious of any firm that asks you to.

Stage	What you typically pay
On instruction	£250–£500 on account, mainly to fund searches and ID checks
Searches ordered	Drawn from the money on account
Exchange of contracts	Deposit to the seller's solicitor (usually 5–10% of price, from your funds)
Completion	Balance of the legal fee and remaining disbursements
After completion	Stamp Duty return filed and paid within 14 days; registration lodged

If you are selling, the balance is normally deducted from the sale proceeds on completion day, so you never write a cheque at all. If you are buying without a related sale, you send the money in advance of completion.

Are conveyancing fees negotiable?

Partly, and it is worth knowing exactly which parts.

What can move: the legal fee itself, particularly if you are instructing the same firm on both a sale and a purchase — ask for the combined discount, most firms have one and few volunteer it. Supplements are sometimes waived if you push, especially where two apply to the same transaction. And a firm sitting quiet in a slow month will sharpen its pencil.

What cannot move: every disbursement. HM Land Registry fees are statutory. Search fees are set by the provider and the council. VAT is VAT. Anyone offering to "discount" a disbursement is either absorbing it into their own margin or not telling you the truth about what it is.

One more thing worth knowing. If an estate agent recommends a conveyancer with unusual enthusiasm, ask whether they receive a referral fee. Many do, and the fee is commonly a few hundred pounds per instruction — money that has to come from somewhere, usually your quote. Agents are required to disclose referral arrangements, but disclosure and prominence are different things. You are free to instruct anyone regulated by the SRA or CLC.

Conveyancing on a cash sale — what actually drops out

This is where the sums change materially, and it is barely covered anywhere.

When there is no mortgage on the buyer's side, a whole tier of work disappears: the lender's panel requirements, the report on title to the lender, the mortgage acting fee, the bankruptcy searches against the borrowers, and one of the CHAPS transfers. On a straightforward cash purchase you would expect the legal fee to sit at the lower end of the range rather than the middle, and the disbursement list to be shorter.

For a seller, the bigger effect is not the fee — it is the timeline and the certainty. Ready Steady Sell's own 2025 data across vetted cash buyers found an average completion of 27 days and a 0% fall-through rate on completed vetted cash sales, against roughly 30% fall-through on the open market. Fewer weeks of conveyancing is fewer opportunities for the transaction to die, and every death costs you the search money again.

The trade-off is honest and you should hear it plainly: vetted cash buyers in our 2025 data paid 80–92% of market value. You are exchanging a slice of price for speed and certainty. Sometimes that is the right trade. Often it is not.

Worth noting too: many genuine cash-buying companies cover the seller's legal fees as part of the offer, which removes £600–£1,300 from your side of the ledger. Read the offer carefully — "we pay your legal fees" sometimes means "we pay our panel solicitor, who acts for us". The details are in our guide to the cost of selling a house to a cash buyer and what happens after you accept a cash offer.

Scotland and Northern Ireland are different

Every fee figure above is England and Wales. If you are in Scotland the system is not comparable: solicitors handle both the marketing and the legal work, offers are made through formal missives, the seller must provide a Home Report before marketing, the tax is Land and Buildings Transaction Tax rather than Stamp Duty, and registration goes to Registers of Scotland on its own fee scale. The Home Report alone is a seller cost that does not exist south of the border.

Northern Ireland runs its own registration system through Land Registry NI, with its own fees, and the tax is Stamp Duty Land Tax as in England. Wales follows the England and Wales conveyancing process but the tax is Land Transaction Tax, with different bands.

If a cost guide quotes you one UK-wide figure without saying which jurisdiction it means, it means England and Wales and has not thought about it.

Solicitor or licensed conveyancer — does it change the price?

Not reliably, and the choice matters less than the firm's workload.

A solicitor is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and qualified across the full breadth of law, so a firm with a property department can also deal with the probate, the matrimonial order or the trust that sometimes sits behind a sale. A licensed conveyancer is regulated by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers and specialises in property alone. Both carry compulsory professional indemnity insurance. Both are accepted on lender panels, though individual lenders keep their own lists.

Pick a solicitor if the transaction has a legal complication attached — an inherited property, a divorce, an absent co-owner, a title defect. Pick whichever is quickest and clearest otherwise. And check lender panel membership before you instruct: if your conveyancer is not on your lender's panel, the lender instructs its own firm and you pay for two.

Online conveyancers versus the high street

Online and volume conveyancers usually quote lower legal fees, sometimes appreciably lower. The economics are straightforward: bigger caseloads, case-management software, less office overhead, and fee-earners handling more files each.

The trade-off shows up in responsiveness. A file that needs someone to pick up the phone to a managing agent, chase a missing indemnity policy or push back on an unreasonable enquiry is the file that stalls in a high-volume system. On a clean freehold sale with no chain, an online firm is often excellent value. On a leasehold flat with an unresponsive freeholder, the £200 you saved buys you six weeks of delay.

Judge on reviews that mention communication specifically, not on star ratings in aggregate.

How to compare conveyancing quotes without getting stung

1. Get three written quotes, and insist each one shows the total payable including VAT and every anticipated disbursement.
2. Check the supplement list. Ask directly: "which supplements apply to my transaction?" Leasehold, new build, shared ownership, gifted deposit, unregistered title, expedited completion.
3. Confirm the Land Registry column. Electronic or postal? On a £340,000 purchase that is £150 versus £330.
4. Ask the fall-through question and get the answer in writing.
5. Check regulation. Solicitors appear on the Law Society's Find a Solicitor register; licensed conveyancers on the CLC register. Verify before you send money.
6. Ask who your actual point of contact is and whether you will get a named fee-earner or a case-management portal. On a slow transaction this matters more than £80 of fee.

Cheapest is rarely best value here. A firm that answers enquiries in two days rather than two weeks can take a fortnight off your sale timeline, and time is the thing that actually kills transactions. Our guide to the conveyancing process walks through the stages in order.

How conveyancing fits the rest of the cost of selling

Conveyancing is real money but it is not the biggest line. On a typical £280,000 sale through a high street agent, commission at 1.2% plus VAT is around £4,032 — roughly four times the legal bill. Add an EPC at £60–£120, removals at £400–£1,500, and any pre-sale work the survey forces you into.

Put another way: obsessing over a £150 difference between conveyancing quotes while accepting an agent's first commission figure is the wrong end of the telescope. Run the whole number through our cost of selling a house calculator, and if you want to know what you are actually working with, start with a realistic figure for what your house is worth.

If speed and certainty matter more than squeezing the last few percent, it is worth seeing what vetted cash house buyers and house-buying companies will actually put on the table. One offer tells you nothing. Several, competing, tell you what your property is worth to that market — compare offers side by side before you commit to any route.

Frequently asked questions about conveyancing fees

Who pays the conveyancing fees, the buyer or the seller?

Both. Each side instructs and pays its own conveyancer. The buyer's bill is larger because the buyer pays for searches, the Land Registry registration fee and the Stamp Duty return. The seller pays a legal fee and, on a leasehold property, the management pack.

Do you pay conveyancing fees if the sale falls through?

You pay for what has already been spent. Under a "no sale, no fee" arrangement the firm waives its own legal fee, but searches already ordered are not refundable and money paid on account may be partly consumed. Some firms also charge an abortive fee of £100–£300. Ask for the position in writing before you instruct.

Are conveyancing fees negotiable?

The legal fee is, particularly if you instruct the same firm for a sale and a purchase — ask for the combined discount. Disbursements are not: Land Registry fees are set by statute and search fees are set by the provider and the local council.

When do you pay conveyancing fees?

Usually £250–£500 on account at the start to fund searches and ID checks, then the balance on completion. If you are selling, the balance is normally deducted from the sale proceeds, so you never pay it directly.

How much are conveyancing fees on a £300,000 house?

Selling, expect roughly £600–£1,300 in legal fees. Buying, roughly £800–£1,900 in legal fees plus £1,200–£2,500 all-in once searches and the £150 electronic Land Registry fee for that price band are added.

Do conveyancing fees include VAT?

Sometimes — it depends how the firm quotes. The legal fee and most search fees carry 20% VAT. HM Land Registry fees and Stamp Duty do not. Always compare quotes on a total-payable, VAT-inclusive basis.

Why is conveyancing more expensive for leasehold?

There is more work: reviewing the lease, ground rent and service charge provisions, and obtaining or reviewing the freeholder's management pack. Expect a supplement of around £150–£300 on the legal fee, plus the pack itself, which managing agents commonly charge £150–£800 for.

Can I avoid conveyancing fees altogether by selling to a cash buyer?

Not avoid, but often have them covered. Many genuine cash-buying companies pay the seller's legal fees as part of the offer, removing £600–£1,300 from your costs. Read the wording — check whether they are paying for your own independent conveyancer or their panel firm.