Expert Property Solicitors and Conveyancers with a Personal Approach

Ryan Property Law has gained a strong reputation for providing clear and easy-to-understand costs information.

We offer a fixed fee service and will be happy to provide a free, no obligation personal quotation tailored to your own individual transaction. 

Every case at Ryan Property Law is dealt with personally by one of our seven lawyers. The firm is led by its four partners, who possess decades of conveyancing experience and expertise between them. We also have an experienced Chartered Legal Executive, along with a CILEx Paralegal and a trainee solicitor, both of whom are supervised by the firm’s partners. Your transaction will be allocated according to complexity and each lawyer's capacity at the time of your instruction. Please click on the “About” tab above to meet our experienced and friendly team.

We would always recommend that you use the quote function on our website to enable us to put together a quote that takes account the likely costs that we would expect for your own circumstances in an accurate and easy to use format.

If you would like to know more about the conveyancing process and the work that we will carry out on your behalf, please watch our handy video guide, which can be accessed on our website homepage or you can read the information further down this page.

It is impossible to give any realistic idea of the time that a residential conveyancing transaction will take because there are so many factors that can impact on any transaction such as the time that it takes to obtain a mortgage, the complexity of the title to the property, delays due to surveys, parties’ moving requirements, etc. A delay elsewhere in a chain could delay your own transaction, so the more parties in the chain, the slower the transaction might proceed, since the more opportunity there is for delay.

Data from Rightmove published in October 2024 suggests that the present national average time from the acceptance of an offer to formal completion on residential conveyancing transactions is currently 152 days, which is around five months. Obviously it is possible to proceed in perhaps three months but equally it could take much longer. We will, of course, do what we can to progress your matter as proactively as we are able but it really is very difficult to give any idea on likely completion dates until the transaction reaches an advanced stage.

Residential Property Charges

On any conveyancing transaction, the charges you pay are broken down into three specific parts:

• Conveyancer’s Costs – this is how much the conveyancer will charge you for the work that they do. At Ryan Property Law, we work on a fixed fee basis, agreed at the outset with you, for transactional conveyancing. You will find that most conveyancers, including ourselves, will show their fees to be exclusive of VAT, which is currently set at 20%. Be aware that many conveyancers charge a basic fee and then have “add ons” for standard work, such as verifying your ID, dealing with your mortgage lender or to prepare the Stamp Duty Land Tax return. This type of work is included in our basic fee because it is required in almost every transaction.
• Disbursements – these are sums that the conveyancer will pay on your behalf to third parties. Most commonly, the conveyancer will pay out your search fees to obtain information from the local Council, the local Water Authority and (in areas with historic mining activity) the Coal Authority. The conveyancer may also have to pay money to the Land Registry for documents relating to the property and to register a transaction once it has completed.
• Tax – on purchases and on transfers of ownership, Stamp Duty Land Tax (or, in Wales, Land Transaction Tax) will apply. The rate you pay will depend on whether you already own a property and, if you do, whether you are replacing your main residence. Lower tax rates are also available for most first-time buyers. This can be very complicated and

Conveyancer’s Costs

Our charges are based on the value of the property and any anticipated complexity that we become aware of (for example, where the property is newbuild, leasehold or shared ownership). The starting fees for our residential sales and purchase transactions are as follows:

Residential Freehold Sales

Residential Freehold Purchases

Remortgages should cost in the region of £425 to £575 plus VAT. Where a remortgage also involves a change in the ownership of the property (for example, adding a person to the mortgage or removing someone), the fee is likely to be in the region of £575 to £750 plus VAT.

In addition, the conveyancing process usually requires same-day bank transfer payments to be made on your behalf, such as to pay the purchase price to the seller’s solicitors or to repay an existing mortgage on completion. We charge a fee of £28 plus VAT for each occasion on which a same-day payment is required, which reflects the administration involved and also covers the bank charges incurred by us in making such a payment on your behalf.

Leasehold and shared ownership purchases cannot follow the above charging structure - these can be extremely complicated, particularly in blocks which are in excess of four storeys in height. An additional charge will apply, depending on the complexity of the leasehold documentation involved. This reflects the additional work involved in dealing with a freeholder and / or management company, investigating rent and service charge and also in approving the terms of the lease and dealing with the requirements on any transfer or new mortgage. Generally speaking, the leasehold structures in smaller developments are much more straightforward in smaller residential blocks than they are in larger developments, particularly those in town and city centres or which are in a block with combined commercial and residential use. You should expect to pay a supplement of around £275 to £450 plus VAT on properties which are in smaller developments and £425 to £675 plus VAT on larger developments with more complicated management arrangements. We also reserve the right to charge a further £300 plus VAT if the property is subject to the provisions of the Building Safety Act, which applies to taller buildings.

In some cases, additional charges may apply and further information on this is detailed below.

Disbursements

On a sale transaction, charges are usually limited to obtaining documentation from Land Registry, which can range from £14 on a straightforward freehold property to £70 on a more complicated leasehold property. No VAT is payable on these figures.

On a purchase transaction, the position is much more complicated. Search fees vary between each local authority. For example, in Leeds or Wakefield, the cost of a local authority, drainage and water and a Coal Authority search will be in the region of £205, whereas in Bradford or Calderdale, the same searches cost around £270 – in some parts of the country, the total figure could be as much as £400. These figures are inclusive of VAT. On commercial transactions, the cost of searches can be significantly higher and you should contact us for a bespoke quotation.

In addition, on purchase and remortgage transactions, fees are payable to the Land Registry to carry out a final check on the deeds and if an owner has been made bankrupt just before completion (usually ranging from £7 to £32) and also to register the new purchase and / or mortgage. For example, to register a purchase at £150,000 will usually cost £100, whereas a purchase at £350,000 will ordinarily cost £150. No VAT is payable on these figures.

On leasehold property transactions, sellers will usually be expected to pay for an information pack from the landlord and / or management company, the cost of which varies considerably between developments but is often £200 to £500. Purchasers may be required to serve notice of the change of ownership on the landlord and / or management company, to enter into a Deed of Covenant, to obtain a membership certificate or to obtain a consent letter to register the purchase at Land Registry. Again, the cost involved here could be anything from £100 to £800 depending on the fees charged by the landlord and / or management company.

Tax

The calculation of Stamp Duty Land Tax is complicated and is dependent upon a number of factors including whether you are a first time buyer, how many properties that you own and whether you are a UK resident. To get an accurate idea of the figure you are likely to have to pay, the HMRC website has a calculator into which you can provide your details to get an idea of the likely tax due, which can be accessed from this link: Stamp Duty Land Tax Calculator

In the Budget of October 2024, the Government revised rates for Stamp Duty Land Tax. The table below explains (in simple terms) the rates that apply in respect of residential property transactions but is for guidance only and should not be relied on as an accurate . The rates shown below are those which apply to completions after 1 April 2025. For completions before that date, lower rates may apply.

 We appreciate that these tables can be confusing, so as an example, a property purchased at £240,000 would result in:

• Where it qualifies for the lower rate (usually where it will be that person’s main residence and where they own no other property), then no tax would be paid on the first £125,000 and a rate of 2% would apply to the remaining £115,000, resulting in £2,300 of SDLT to pay.
• If all purchasers are first time buyers and planning to use the property as their main residence, then no tax would be payable.
• Where the higher rates apply, such as where the property is being used as a second home or buy-to-let, the first £125,000 would be taxed at 5% (£6,250) and the remaining £115,000 would be taxed at 10% (£11,500), resulting in £17,750 of SDLT to pay.

 A property purchased at £450,000 would result in:

• Where it qualifies for the lower rate, then no tax would be paid on the first £125,000 and a rate of 2% would apply to the next slice of £125,000 (£2,500) and a rate of 5% would apply to the remaining £200,000 (£10,000), resulting in £12,500 of SDLT to pay.
• If all purchasers are first time buyers and planning to use the property as their main residence, then no tax would be payable on the first £300,000, with a rate of 5% applying to the remaining £150,000, resulting in £7,500 of SDLT to pay.
• Where the higher rates apply, such as where the property is being used as a second home or buy-to-let, the first £125,000 would be taxed at 5% (£6,250) and the remaining £325,000 would be taxed at 10% (£32,500), resulting in £38,750 of SDLT to pay.

What am I paying for? The conveyancing process explained...

The conveyancing process involves a lot of stages and is reliant on a large number of other people – there are a lot of places where there is the potential for a delay to occur. To help you with your understanding of the process, we will explain the stages of a typical conveyancing transaction:

Once an offer to purchase a property has been accepted, both the seller and the purchaser will instruct a solicitor or conveyancer. The estate agent will usually then communicate the details of the solicitor or conveyancer that each party has chosen so that they can contact each other. We will use the phrase 'conveyancer' below.

• You will receive a pack of documents from us, which you will need to complete and return. These tell us about you and the transaction, as well as enabling us to verify your ID and carry out an assessment of the funding arrangements for the transaction, if we need money from you. Please complete and return these as soon as you are able to do so, providing all of the supporting information evidence. You can tell us in the forms whether you want us to start work immediately or whether you want to wait until (for example, if you are purchasing,) your mortgage offer has been approved or your survey has taken place.
• If you are selling the property, you will need to complete two key forms; a Property Information Form (which asks questions about extensions, disputes, utilities, boundaries, flooding and other key matters), as well as a Fittings and Contents Form (which asks about items that are being left at the property by the seller or those which they are taking with them). These forms are long and complex and it can sometimes take a little time for the seller to complete them and collect the supporting information that needs to be provided with them.
• When the seller has returned their forms to their conveyancer, the conveyancer then will download the title to the seller’s property from HM Land Registry, prepare a contract for the sale of the land and send them to the purchaser's conveyancer, along with the seller’s completed forms. They should also provide copies of any certificate, guarantees and other paperwork that the seller holds in relation to the property. Together, these items are referred to as the ‘contract pack’.
• A purchaser's conveyancer will then, on receipt of the contract pack from the seller’s solicitors, have three key tasks to deal with:
  • send to the purchaser copies of the forms that the seller has completed, along with any certificate or guarantees that we have received, so that the client can check through them and make sure that there is nothing in them that is unexpected;
  • submit searches against the property – essentially this means asking the local Council, the relevant water company and the Mining Remediation Authority to supply the information that they hold about the property – in most cases, the search results come back in less than two weeks;
  • review the contract pack to establish whether the property has a “good and marketable title” – this includes checking the access to the property, consents for alterations, complying with the requirements of any mortgage lender and asking any specific questions that the purchaser has asked them to raise, including legal matters that might arise from a survey. In almost every case, a list of questions or queries will be needed to clarify information in the seller’s title deeds or the information that the seller provides in their initial forms. These questions are called ‘enquiries’.
  • if the property is leasehold (such as a flat), then the landlord and / or management company will also provide an information pack about the building, communal charges, fire safety, etc, along with the process to deal with a change of ownership, all of which needs to be reviewed and again enquiries raised on these. This is an additional layer of work that applies to leasehold properties and hence why there is a supplementary charge for that work.
• While the enquiries are being dealt with by the seller and their conveyancer, there are other tasks for the purchaser's conveyancer to deal with:
  • reporting to the purchaser on the results of the searches as they come in and providing advice on their contents;
  • obtaining a copy of your mortgage offer (if there is to be a mortgage) – the lender will supply the purchaser's conveyancer with this directly, at which time they will report on it to their client and prepare the documentation that needs to be signed to put the mortgage into effect;
  • reviewing your funding arrangements in accordance with anti-money laundering law and perhaps asking for an explanation or additional evidence.
• In the meantime, the seller’s conveyancer will review the enquiries that have been raised by the purchaser's conveyancer. They may be able to answer some points immediately from information they already hold, and will asking the seller to answer others that might be in the seller’s knowledge (or the landlord / management company where this relates to the management of a block of flats). When they have that information, they will then respond to the purchaser's conveyancer.
• The purchaser's conveyancer will review those answers (which are known as 'replies to enquiries') and provide advice to the purchaser on what has been received. In some cases, the purchaser's conveyancer may need to make the mortgage lender aware of a reply – for example, if building work has been carried out without the appropriate consents being obtained. Some of the replies provided by the seller’s solicitors may not be satisfactory and may require further clarification or additional enquiries to be made in view of information revealed. This process may continue back and forth a few times until all matters have been fully dealt with.
• In many cases, it is only at this stage where the parties can realistically begin to think about a potential completion date (moving date) – and if you are in a ‘chain’, (i.e. where there are a number of different parties selling two, three or more houses which are all linked), all of the parties in this chain need to be at this point for anticipated completion dates to be considered realistic.
• The purchaser's conveyancer will then prepare a report, at which time the purchaser will receive a comprehensive information pack about the legal aspects of the transaction and their conveyancer's advice on it. They will also arrange for the signature of all of the papers that are necessary to complete the purchase and any mortgage.
• At around the same time, the seller's conveyancer will also have the seller sign the papers for the sale of the property and direct where any proceeds from the transaction should be paid.
• After the return of the signed the papers, whether acting in a sale of purchase, we arrange for the file to be independently checked by another partner in the firm to ensure that all matters have been properly covered and that your interests are properly protected – this process is so as to comply with the requirements of the Conveyancing Quality Scheme Core Practice Management Standards, by our regulators and also by our professional indemnity insurers.
• A financial statement will then be prepared and checked by our cashier and, where money is required from you, this sum will be requested. You will also need to allow sufficient time to be able to make the transfer, because large money transfers may require you to visit the bank in person.
• When all of that has been done, the parties can then proceed to exchange of contracts. This is the point where the parties enter into a legally binding contract for the sale and purchase of the property, choosing a date that the purchase will be completed on.
• On the completion day, the purchasrer's conveyancer will send the purchase money through the banking system to the seller’s conveyancer. The seller’s conveyancer will then confirm receipt, call the estate agent to confirm that keys can be released and also pay off any mortgage that the seller might have. They will then hand over the signed transfer deed to the purchaser's conveyancer, which enables them to register thepurchase at HM Land Registry.
• Following completion, the purchaser's conveyancer will then make arrangements to register your purchase (and any mortgage) at HM Land Registry.

If your purchase is part of a ‘chain’, (i.e. where there are a number of different parties selling two, three or more houses which are all linked) then this means that everyone must agree on the same exchange date and completion (moving) date and therefore it may be the case that, even if you are ready to exchange contracts, you may have to wait for all of the other parties in the transaction to have dealt with all of these stages before exchange of contracts can take place. This is why being involved a chain can sometimes take longer. Not only might could one person causing a delay (for example, trouble in obtaining a mortgage offer or a conveyancing issue needing to be resolved) delay the whole chain, because everyone needs to move on the same day, finding a date that avoids any holidays or work commitments that parties in the chain might have may also delay matters.

Please bear in mind that, because of the need to pay for searches and other up-front costs that could be wasted if the purchase does not go through, many buyers choose to ask their solicitor not to start work until certain key issues have been dealt with – for example, if they have a property to sell, until terms are agreed on that property. They may also wish to wait until they have the result of a satisfactory survey or until their mortgage is approved. If you (or anyone else in the chain) requests that their solicitor does not start work, that will delay the overall timescale for the transaction.

If there is no chain, it is possible to expect a transaction to take perhaps as little as six weeks but perhaps more likely to be in the region of two to three months from when you ask us to commence work, assuming that there are no significant problems or difficulties faced. Where there is a chain, you may find that anything from two to six months is a more realistic estimate, depending on the number of parties who are in the same chain and whether other transactions cause delays. Even then, it really is very difficult to give a firm idea of timescales until we have been able to review the title to the property in order to gauge whether there are any concerning issues – and until the position of the other parties in the chain is known.

When might you be charged more for the work that we do?

We can assure you that, only in rare cases will the level of our costs be varied from the figure quoted. This may occur in instances where the transaction takes much longer than anticipated or where the form of any proposed documentation requires drafting or substantial amendment by the firm (additional documentation may, for example, be in the form of a Statutory Declaration or a Deed of Trust between the owners). Please be assured that we will not increase our fee from the stated amount without having first advised you of the same in writing but, in order to keep our pricing structure competitive, you should be aware that the following matters are common reasons where additional charges may apply:

• Where, after opening our file, we discover that the property is freehold but is subject to a maintenance arrangement in respect of shared or communal areas. This reflects the additional work involved in dealing with the estate management company, investigating service charge and also in dealing with the requirements on any transfer or new mortgage. The additional fee will be in the sum of £95 plus VAT.
• Where we are required to correspond with more than one party on a transaction (common examples include, a couple in the process of separating who require copies of letters to be sent to each of them or who require us to see them at separate appointments or where you have appointed another firm of solicitors to deal with a linked transaction, such as a related re-mortgage, sale or purchase), we will charge a further £145 plus VAT to reflect the additional work involved.
• Where a property is newly built, either being purchased from the first time from the developer or where it is being sold by the first occupier within the first few years following its construction, we must reserve the right to charge a supplement to review the substantial additional documentation that applies to newly-built properties, which might include road and drain adoption agreements, the terms of planning permissions, the suitability of newbuild warranties, planning obligations and the terms of the build contract. You should expect to pay a supplement of £275 to £435 plus VAT if the property you are purchasing is newly-built or has been built in the last ten years.
• Where a property is being purchased through a limited company, we must reserve the right to charge additional sums to investigate the ownership and control structure of the company and the content of the company’s constitution. The additional charge will be £125 plus VAT if the transaction is a sale or otherwise is a purchase or transfer of equity that does not involve a mortgage. Where there is a new mortgage being created, a charge of £225 plus VAT will be made. Please note that some lenders require the directors of limited companies to enter into personal guarantees, for which a further charge will be made in the event that the lender allows this firm to provide independent advice to the directors of the company.
• Where the property involves a sale, purchase, remortgage or transfer which is subject to the terms of a tenancy agreement (i.e. where a third party occupier will remain in the property once the transaction has completed). In those instances, we will charge a supplementary fee of £125 plus VAT to reflect the work involved in dealing with the regulatory aspects, advice on the terms of the tenancy and its suitability for any lender and in dealing with any bond or deposit that the tenant might have paid.
• Where a property is purchased with the assistance of a Help to Buy ISA or a Lifetime ISA or similar scheme, we shall charge £50 plus VAT for each ISA account where we are to claim a Help to Buy ISA bonus on your behalf or make arrangements to draw down Lifetime ISA monies for you (in accordance with the Government’s recommended figure) to reflect the additional work involved.
• Where we are asked on a sale transaction to prepare a statutory declaration to deal with matters relating to (for example, occupation of land, use of a right of way, the solvency of an individual) or similar, we reserve the right to make a charge of £50 plus VAT for dealing with this.
• In most cases, if you are buying a property with a mortgage, the lender you choose will also appoint us to act on their behalf in ensuring that the property is acceptable for their mortgage security. In rare occasions, the lender will appoint separate solicitors to act for them – in those cases, not only will you usually be responsible for the fees of those solicitors, we will charge an additional fee for the extra correspondence in liaising with those solicitors and satisfying their requirements. This will usually be in the region of £375 plus VAT.
• We will charge an additional sum of £85 plus VAT where you change mortgage lenders part-way through a purchase or re-mortgage transaction and we are required to report on the terms of the alternative mortgage offer and associated documents.
• Where a property being bought or sold is subject to a lease of the solar panels attached to the roof, this will incur a typical additional charge in the region of £150 plus VAT to reflect the additional work involved.
• We will charge an additional £60 plus VAT for each loan, other repayment or third party interest (such as credit card repayments, second mortgages, debts or other interests which are registered against the property) that we are required to deal with, either by you or as a condition of any mortgage offer, to reflect the administration time involved in dealing with those parties. Please rest assured that, if you have only a single mortgage to be repaid on a property that you are selling or remortgaging, this charge will not apply.

You should be aware that, if for any reason your transaction does not proceed, we must also reserve the right to charge a proportion of our fee to reflect the time we have spent on the matter (this will be based on a percentage of the total work carried out at the point at which the transaction does not proceed), in addition to which you will also remain liable for any disbursements that have been incurred.