Who Pays for Conveyancing Fees in England and Wales?

Each side in a property transaction pays for their own legal representation: the buyer pays their conveyancer, the seller pays theirs. Neither party covers the other’s bill unless specifically agreed in writing, for example, a developer covering a buyer’s legal fees as a sales incentive.

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Key Takeaways:

• Each party pays their own solicitor. Buyers and sellers don’t cover each other’s legal fees, except in specific agreed-upon cases, such as new-build incentives.
• Nothing is legally binding until the exchange of contracts (Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989), which is why legal costs can be incurred and lost before a sale ever completes.
• ID/AML checks are a mandatory disbursement under the 2017 Money Laundering Regulations, typically £10–£30 per person, and catch many buyers by surprise.
• Buyers face the full list of disbursements: searches (£250–£350), Land Registry fees (scaled to price), bank transfer fees, and, usually, the largest single cost, Stamp Duty Land Tax.
• Sellers have real costs too, not just a legal fee: mortgage redemption admin (£50–£300), title document copies, and, for leasehold sales, the freeholder’s management information pack (£150–£450).
• If a sale falls through before exchange, the legal fees and disbursements already incurred are normally still payable, although some firms, including Muve, offer a No Move, No Fee policy to waive the legal fee element.

Why You Pay Before You’re Legally Committed

A property transaction is “subject to contract” from the moment an offer is accepted, right up until the exchange of contracts. Under the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, no agreement to buy or sell land is legally binding unless it is in writing, signed by both parties, and exchanged. Everything before that point, however far along it feels, can be walked away from by either side, for any reason, without penalty.

This is why conveyancing fees work differently from most other professional services. Your conveyancer starts incurring costs, such as searches, ID checks, title checks, and enquiries, from the point they’re instructed, long before there’s any binding obligation on either side. If the sale collapses at week six because the buyer pulls out or the chain breaks, the legal work already done still has to be paid for. It’s the direct consequence of a system that deliberately keeps both parties free to walk away until the exchange, and it’s why “what happens if it falls through” is worth understanding before you instruct anyone, not after.

What Are Conveyancing Fees?

Conveyancing fees are the legal costs of transferring ownership of a property. They fall into two categories:

• Legal fees. What your solicitor or licensed conveyancer charges for their own work: reviewing contracts, running searches, liaising with the other side’s solicitor and your mortgage lender, and handling completion and registration.
• Disbursements. Third-party costs your conveyancer pays on your behalf and passes on to you: searches, Land Registry fees, bank transfer charges, and identity verification.

Specifically regarding identity verification, since 2017, conveyancers have been required under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 to carry out ID and source-of-funds checks for every client. This is a genuine, unavoidable disbursement, typically £10–£30 per person, and it’s one of the most commonly queried line items on a completion statement precisely because it’s rarely mentioned upfront.

Who Pays What

In most cases, the buyer and seller each pay their own legal fees. One exception is with some new-build homes, where developers may offer to cover part or all of the buyer’s conveyancing costs as an incentive. If you’re buying a new build, it’s worth checking exactly what’s included. Developers also have to follow the New Homes Quality Code, which introduced clearer rules around incentives and the information buyers should receive when reserving a property.

What the Buyer Pays For

Buying involves more legal work than selling, so buyers typically face a longer list of disbursements. As a guide to what these commonly cost, alongside the solicitor’s own fee:

The Land Registry fee is set out on HM Land Registry’s own fee scale for registration services. On a standard electronic transfer of a registered title, the normal case for most residential purchases, a £300,000 purchase attracts a Scale 2 registration fee of around £270. If the property has never been registered before (first registration, Scale 1), the fee roughly doubles. Your conveyancer submits this electronically as standard, which keeps the fee at the lower rate; paper applications cost more and take longer to process.

On top of these, buyers pay Stamp Duty Land Tax where the price exceeds the relevant threshold. As of the 2025 rate reset, standard buyers in England pay 0% up to £125,000, 2% up to £250,000, 5% up to £925,000, 10% up to £1.5m, and 12% above £1.5 m. First-time buyers pay 0% on the portion up to £300,000 and 5% on the portion up to £500,000, with no relief available above £ 500,000. SDLT isn’t a conveyancing fee as such, but it’s collected and filed by your solicitor as part of the same transaction, and it’s usually the single largest cost on a buyer’s completion statement, so it’s worth factoring in alongside legal fees rather than treating it separately.

Worked Example: Typical £300,000 Freehold Purchase

Putting the buyer-side numbers together on a typical £300,000 freehold purchase: disbursements alone commonly total £400–£600 (searches, ID checks, bank transfer, Land Registry fee), on top of a legal fee that’s usually somewhere between £700 and £1,500 depending on the firm and complexity, before SDLT is added for non-first-time buyers. If the property is leasehold, add costs for reviewing the lease, obtaining management information, and serving notices after completion, commonly another £150–£350 depending on the freeholder or managing agent.

What the Seller Pays For

Sellers have a narrower but still real set of costs:

Sellers also incur time and coordination costs that don’t show up as a line item but affect how the transaction runs, chiefly, responding promptly to the buyer’s solicitor’s enquiries and, for leasehold sales, getting the management pack ordered early. It’s one of the most common causes of delay when left until the buyer’s solicitor asks for it.

Do Buyers Ever Pay the Seller’s Fees?

Not in a standard resale. The exception is new build, where a developer may offer to cover legal fees as an incentive to secure a sale, subject to the disclosure requirements under the New Homes Quality Code, which requires developers to be clear about what an incentive includes and the timescale attached to it. Outside a new build, any arrangement in which one side contributes to the other’s costs must be specifically negotiated and put in writing. It isn’t standard practice and won’t happen by default.

What Happens if the Sale Falls Through?

Because nothing is binding until exchange, this is a real and fairly common scenario, not a hypothetical. If the transaction collapses before the exchange, you’re normally still liable for:

• Any legal fees for work already carried out
• Any disbursements already paid out on your behalf, such as searches already ordered

Some firms, including Muve, offer a No Move, No Fee arrangement, under which the solicitor’s own legal fee is waived if the transaction doesn’t complete. This means that for standard Muve Forward instructions, this applies without an additional time condition. 

However, for Muve Lightspeed, the guarantee is subject to a 14-day condition tied to whether documents have been signed: the legal fee waiver may not apply in the same way if the transaction falls through after that point or once certain documents have been signed. As with any agreement, you should read the terms. Third-party disbursements that have already been incurred, such as search fees, are generally still payable regardless of which service you’re on, since that money has already left the firm’s hands and gone to the local authority, environmental agency, or search provider.

Are Fees Different for Leasehold Properties?

Yes, and noticeably so. Leasehold conveyancing involves extra work for your solicitor on both sides of the transaction, including reviewing the lease terms, service charge accounts, ground rent provisions, buildings insurance arrangements, and any planned major works, as well as raising additional enquiries with the landlord or managing agent. This is why leasehold conveyancing typically costs more than freehold conveyancing, in both legal fees and disbursements.

One point worth flagging if you’re dealing with a newer lease: the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 caps ground rent at a peppercorn (effectively zero) for most new residential long leases granted since 30 June 2022. If you’re buying a leasehold flat with a lease from before that date, your solicitor will need to check the ground rent terms specifically, since older leases can still carry escalating ground rent clauses that affect both mortgageability and resale value.

Do Remortgages Have Conveyancing Fees?

Yes, though usually lower than a purchase or sale, since there’s no exchange, no chain, and typically no searches required. Your solicitor will redeem your existing mortgage, register the new lender’s charge, and handle the Land Registry paperwork. Many lenders include free legal work as part of a remortgage deal, or offer a cashback alternative that lets you instruct your own conveyancer instead, worth comparing, since a “free legal fees” offer sometimes limits your choice of solicitor to the lender’s panel.

Can Conveyancing Fees Be Negotiated?

To an extent. Fixed-fee pricing is now standard across most of the market, but it’s still worth comparing what’s actually included before instructing anyone. A lower headline legal fee is not the cheapest option overall if disbursements are added on top with less transparency. A quote that clearly separates the legal fee from disbursements and that states upfront what happens if the transaction doesn’t complete is a reasonable proxy for how transparent the firm will be for the rest of the process.

Get a Conveyancing Quote from Muve

Instructing a conveyancer early, ideally before you’ve had an offer accepted, means searches and ID checks are already underway by the time you need to move quickly. At Muve, our No Move, No Fee policy means you won’t pay our legal fee if your transaction doesn’t complete, and our Muve Forward and Muve Lightspeed services are built for buyers and sellers who want either straightforward fixed-fee conveyancing or the fastest realistic route to exchange.

Request a free conveyancing quote from Muve today to see exactly what your transaction is likely to cost, disbursement by disbursement, before you commit to anything.

About this article

This article was written by Diana Santos, a legal service and property writer with more than a decade of experience creating educational content for property businesses across the UK. Since joining Muve, she has specialised in UK conveyancing, home buying and selling, and residential property law, researching guidance from organisations including the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC), the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), and HM Land Registry. 

While this article is reviewed periodically to reflect changes in UK conveyancing practice, this is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice.