Moving Home Costs

Our award-winning conveyancing team understand the pressure and anxiety that can be associated with buying or selling property. That’s why we offer complete transparency about our conveyancing fees and a range of fixed fee services with no hidden costs.

You can also get an online estimate for our conveyancing services for buying or selling a property depending on your needs.

How to budget for moving home

If you are buying a property, you will need to budget for a number of additional costs beyond the purchase price. These may include:

• Solicitors’ or ‘conveyancing’ fees for your property purchase. Complete our online form for an estimate. These fees will cover:
  • all the contract work and:
  • searches, including local, mining, drainage, water and environmental search, as well as Land Registry title searches.
• Solicitors’ fees to sell your existing property, unless you are a first-time buyer.
• A survey – your mortgage lender will conduct a survey to confirm the approximate value of the property, but most buyers also conduct a more-detailed to survey to fully understand condition of the property they are aiming to buy.
• A mundic test, depending on the age and location of the property you are buying.
• Stamp Duty Land Tax for properties over £250,000 or over £425,000 for first-time buyers.
• Ground rent and service charges for a leasehold property. Please note that there may well be other fees for buying and selling leasehold properties that are charged by your management company and/or landlord.
• Mortgage fees, including fees for a remortgage – you can often choose to bundle these into the mortgage sum borrowed, though that does mean you will pay interest on the fee for the lifetime of the mortgage.
• Removal costs: it is worth shopping around to find the best price and service.
• Professional cleaning costs and any maintenance and repairs on your existing property.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list – other legal issues may come to light during our title investigations, such as a defective title indemnity policy, that may mean further expenditure.

Fees for conveyancing

Whatever the property you are buying, we understand that you want clarity about the cost of legal fees – transparency and no hidden extras – including if you buying property through and affordable housing scheme.

To make things easier, we offer a range of fixed fee services. Alternatively, we will provide you with a comprehensive estimate based on our understanding of your requirements.

First-time Buyers Stamp Duty Land Tax Relief

Most property purchases are subject to a special tax called Stamp Duty Land Tax. However, if you are a first-time buyer, you will only need to pay this tax if the purchase price of your property exceeds £425,000. For purchases between £425,001.00 and £625,000.00, Stamp Duty Land Tax is charged at 5% on the portion above £425,001. There is no relief for first-time buyers buying over £625,000.00.

To qualify, you need to fulfil certain criteria. Call our conveyancing team for more information.