The five lines of a purchase

A conveyancing quote is usually one number with a footnote. The purchase itself has five lines, and four of them are set by somebody other than the firm: the searches, the Land Registry, HMRC and, on most files, the bank.

That matters because the line the firm controls is the smallest one. A quote can be genuinely competitive on legal fees and still land a client several hundred pounds away from what they budgeted, because the other four lines were never in the comparison.

What moves, and by how much

Search fees vary by local authority and are the single largest source of quote-to-quote difference on otherwise identical files. Land Registry registration is a published scale that steps with price, so it is knowable to the pound before an offer is accepted. Stamp duty is the largest line on most purchases above the threshold and has nothing to do with the firm at all.

What a client should ask for

One figure, itemised, with VAT shown separately on the lines that bear it. If a firm cannot produce that in a paragraph, the quote is a headline rather than an estimate.

The estimator on this site produces exactly that breakdown from the purchase price and the matter type.