Published prices · SRA Transparency Rules · data as of 20 October 2026
The conveyancing fees firms publish, 2026
Every firm that does residential conveyancing must publish its prices. We read the price pages of 1,591 SRA-regulated firms, kept each figure as printed, and ran the same rules our comparison uses to pick one fee per firm. This page is what that dataset says: the median published fee for a purchase, sale and remortgage at three prices, the spread by region, how firms choose to publish, and how many publish nothing. Updated October 2026.
Buying: the published fee for a freehold purchase
1028 of the 1557 priced firms publish a purchase fee of some kind. At each price below, the table counts the firms whose published figure covers that price (a firm whose band table stops at £250,000 is not counted at £300,000), takes one fee per firm by the comparison's rules, and reports the spread. The median is the fee half the firms are below; the quartiles bound the middle half.
| Purchase price | Firms | Lowest | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | 927 | £400 | £850 | £1,050 | £1,400 | £10,000 |
| £300,000 | 921 | £400 | £900 | £1,200 | £1,500 | £10,000 |
| £500,000 | 912 | £400 | £975 | £1,295 | £1,650 | £10,000 |
Legal fee only, as published, before VAT where the firm quotes plus VAT; disbursements, Stamp Duty Land Tax and Land Registry fees excluded. A range counts by its lower figure, a "from" price by that figure, and a band table by the fee of the band the firm's own table assigns to the price. Freehold where the firm distinguishes tenure.
The middle half of published purchase fees at £300,000 runs from £900 to £1,500, so a quote inside that band is ordinary and one above £1,500 is in the highest quarter of what firms print. The lowest published figure that covers £300,000 is £400 and the highest £10,000; both are real published prices, and the firm's page says what each includes. Of the 893 firms whose published fee covers both £150,000 and £500,000, 448 charge more at the higher price; the rest print one figure or one range regardless, which is why the median moves only from £1,050 to £1,295 across that span.
Selling
992 firms publish a sale fee. Published sale fees sit a little below purchase fees at every price: at £300,000 the median is £1,100 against £1,200 for a purchase, with the middle half from £875 to £1,400.
| Sale price | Firms | Lowest | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | 906 | £400 | £800 | £999 | £1,300 | £8,000 |
| £300,000 | 901 | £400 | £875 | £1,100 | £1,400 | £8,000 |
| £500,000 | 889 | £400 | £930 | £1,200 | £1,550 | £8,000 |
Remortgaging
597 firms publish a remortgage fee, and it is the one conveyancing price that is often a single flat figure: at £300,000 the median is £750, the middle half £550 to £925, and the lowest published figure £100. 201 of the 549 figures are one fixed price.
| Property value | Firms | Lowest | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | 559 | £100 | £500 | £700 | £900 | £7,500 |
| £300,000 | 549 | £100 | £550 | £750 | £925 | £7,500 |
| £500,000 | 540 | £100 | £550 | £750 | £950 | £7,500 |
By region: a £300,000 freehold purchase
Region is where the firm's head office is on the SRA register, and many firms act for buyers anywhere in England and Wales, so this is the spread of what firms based in each region print, not what a buyer in that region must pay. On that basis the median published purchase fee in London (£1,450) is 53% above the median in North West (£945). Regions with fewer than five priced firms are pooled rather than summarised.
| Region (firm's head office) | Firms | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North West | 123 | £780 | £945 | £1,100 |
| East Midlands | 50 | £850 | £950 | £1,235 |
| North East | 30 | £850 | £950 | £1,125 |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 64 | £850 | £995 | £1,150 |
| Wales | 53 | £830 | £995 | £1,250 |
| West Midlands | 80 | £799 | £1,000 | £1,250 |
| East of England | 80 | £950 | £1,150 | £1,350 |
| South East | 127 | £1,100 | £1,300 | £1,600 |
| South West | 80 | £1,150 | £1,400 | £1,600 |
| London | 234 | £1,145 | £1,450 | £1,800 |
A low regional median is a reason to get a written quote from a firm there whatever your own postcode: nothing in conveyancing requires the solicitor to be local. The comparison lists the firms behind each figure for your own postcode and price.
How firms choose to publish a price
The Transparency Rules leave the format to the firm. In the data, 60% of the firms with a purchase fee covering £300,000 publish a table of price bands (611 firms publish a band table for a purchase or sale), and the rest print a fixed figure, a range or a "from" price. A range or "from" price tells you less than it appears to: the lower figure is what we rank by, and the firm's page decides what lifts it.
Basis of the published purchase fee at £300,000
| How the fee is published | Firms | Share |
|---|---|---|
| a table of price bands | 557 | 60% |
| a range (lowest figure used) | 176 | 19% |
| a "from" or minimum figure (that figure used) | 112 | 12% |
| a single fixed figure | 77 | 8% |
VAT wording beside it
| VAT wording | Firms | Share |
|---|---|---|
| quoted plus VAT | 868 | 94% |
| VAT treatment not stated beside the figure | 28 | 3% |
| quoted including VAT | 26 | 3% |
"Plus VAT" means the figure the firm prints excludes VAT at 20%; the cost to you is a fifth higher. Where the page does not say, we show the figure as printed and label it.
The firm's own extras
1192 firms print component charges beside the fee: a bank transfer (telegraphic transfer) fee, an identity check fee, a Stamp Duty return fee, a leasehold supplement. Two are common enough to summarise. Across 894 published bank transfer fees the median is £35 (middle half £30 to £40; lowest £4, highest £150). Across 334 published identity check fees the median is £25 (middle half £20 to £40). The comparison shows each firm's own extras beside its fee and leaves the fee itself as printed.
Firms that publish no price
Of the 1591 firms whose websites we read, 34 (2%) had no published price information for any service we could find, despite the rules. 8,813 firms are listed on this site in all, so the dataset is a sample of the firms that publish, weighted towards firms we have reached; it is not a census, and the shares above describe the firms read, not the profession. Coverage grows as we read more firms.
Published fees on the town pages
288 town pages carry a section listing the freehold purchase fees firms within 25 km publish for a £300,000 property, ordered by that fee with the source and read date on every row. Towns with fewer than three such firms show nothing yet.
Towns with a published-fees section (288)
Method and limits
- Source. Each firm's own price page, read on a recorded date and stored with the firm's wording, the page URL and a snapshot. Figures are copied, not retyped; a build check traces every £ figure on this page to the dataset and every dataset figure to the firm's page.
- One fee per firm. The same rules as the comparison: a firm's lowest live figure that covers the price, with worked examples at other prices excluded, figures below a floor (£400 for a purchase or sale, £100 for a remortgage) treated as component charges rather than fees, and percentages given no £ value.
- Quartiles are nearest-rank, so every quartile is a figure some firm published, not an interpolation.
- Sample. 1557 priced firms out of 8,813 listed; regional lines with fewer than five firms are pooled. Prices change; the dataset date is in the heading of this page.