Cost of moving house

It depends heavily on the price and whether you are also selling. For this example, buying at £350,000 and selling at £275,000, the all-in cost is about £15,324, with stamp duty of £7,500 the largest single item. Strip out stamp duty and the moving costs alone are around £7,824.

For most buyers it is stamp duty, especially above the nil-rate band or on a second home. After that the estate-agent fee on the property you are selling is often the next largest, because it is a percentage of the sale price plus VAT. The legal, survey and removals costs are smaller and more predictable.

No. Estate-agent commission is paid by the seller, not the buyer. So if you are only buying, set the sale price to zero and the fee drops out. If you are selling one home and buying another, you pay the agent on the sale side, which is why it is included here.

Legal fees for a straightforward purchase are commonly around £1,000 to £1,500, plus disbursements such as searches and Land Registry fees. Leasehold and new-build transactions cost more because there is extra paperwork. The figure here is a single editable estimate, so adjust it to your quote.

Mostly not. Survey and legal work already done are usually payable even if the purchase collapses, which is why a failed transaction is expensive. Some conveyancers offer a no-move, no-fee arrangement on their own charges, but disbursements and search fees are generally still owed.

The largest item is usually stamp duty, calculated under the gov.uk Stamp Duty Land Tax rules for England and Northern Ireland. Estate-agent commission is charged only on a property being sold, and it includes VAT. Conveyancing, a survey, removals and a mortgage arrangement fee make up the remaining items, and each can be edited to match an actual quote. In this example the total comes to £15,324.

The total is a sum of separately editable items, so changing any single figure, such as the estate-agent fee or the survey cost, moves the overall result immediately. Stamp duty is worked out from the purchase price and the nation selected, plus whether the first-time buyer or additional-property boxes are ticked. The estate-agent line only appears when a sale price is entered, since that fee applies to the property being sold.

Buying at £350,000 and selling at £275,000, stamp duty comes to £7,500 and the estate agent takes £4,125 including VAT. Adding conveyancing, a survey, removals and a mortgage fee brings the all-in cost to £15,324. Removing the sale and buying only would drop the estate-agent line from the total, since that cost applies only to a property being sold.