Conveyancing: the legal work when you buy a home

Conveyancing is the legal process involved in property transactions: the work that transfers ownership of a home from the seller to you, checks that the property is what it appears to be, and registers you as its owner¹. When you buy a house or flat in England or Wales, an offer you make is not legally binding until contracts are exchanged, so almost everything before that point is preparation that either side can walk away from². The conveyancer's job is to make sure that when you do become bound, you know exactly what you are buying.

The work sits alongside, and is separate from, everything else in a purchase. Your mortgage lender arranges its own valuation, a surveyor looks at the condition of the building, and the estate agent markets the property. The conveyancer looks at the law: who owns the home, whether anyone else has rights over it, whether the local authority or the land itself hides problems, and whether the money and the deeds change hands correctly on the day.

What conveyancing covers when you buy a home

Conveyancing covers every legal step between your offer being accepted and the home being registered in your name. That includes checking the seller actually owns the property and has the right to sell it, examining the title deeds, raising questions about the property and its history, ordering searches from the local authority and other bodies, checking the mortgage offer, handling the deposit and the completion payment, paying any property tax that is due, and registering the change of ownership¹.

The scope depends on the property. A freehold house with clean title is the straightforward case. A leasehold flat adds a layer of work because the conveyancer must examine the lease, its covenants and the ground rent arrangements. A shared ownership or equity loan purchase adds another, because a housing association or government scheme administrator is involved and has its own requirements. If you are buying with a Help to Buy equity loan, for example, your conveyancer sends the administrator a letter of undertaking telling it your completion date, the home's value and confirming agreement to pay the correct amount, and the administrator sends back an Authority to Complete confirming the payment date and amount⁶.

Conveyancing also covers the paperwork of joint ownership. If you are buying with someone else, the conveyancer arranges how the ownership is held, which affects what happens if the relationship ends or one of you dies. Guidance for Scottish buyers lists this among the solicitor's core tasks, along with checking title deeds, negotiating the contract, transferring funds and taxes, and putting the property in your name⁷.

Who does it: a solicitor or a licensed conveyancer

Two kinds of professional do this work in England and Wales: a solicitor, and a licensed conveyancer, described in independent jargon guides as "an alternative to a solicitor, qualified to act in the sale or purchase of a property"¹. Both can handle a standard purchase. A solicitor is a fully qualified lawyer who may also handle other legal work; a licensed conveyancer specialises in property. The dedicated comparison of a solicitor or conveyancer sets out the differences in detail.

The rules on who counts as an eligible conveyancer are set in legislation and differ by nation. In Scotland, an eligible conveyancer is a solicitor or advocate within the meaning of section 65 of the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1980, or a conveyancing practitioner as defined in section 23 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990. In Northern Ireland, it is a person enrolled as a solicitor of the Court of Judicature of Northern Ireland under the Solicitors (Northern Ireland) Order 1976⁸.

Some schemes restrict who you can use. Applicants to Help to Buy - Wales must use a solicitor or conveyancer who has undertaken Help to Buy - Wales training, and the Welsh Government publishes a list of trained conveyancers. That list comes with an explicit warning: inclusion on it is not an endorsement or recommendation of that conveyancer, or of any conveyancer, and must not be treated as such⁹.

One practical point matters if you are buying with a mortgage: your lender will only lend on a purchase handled by a conveyancer on its panel of approved firms. If you instruct someone who is not on the panel, the lender will appoint its own conveyancer as well, which can add cost and delay. Checking this early, and asking a prospective conveyancer whether they are on your lender's panel, avoids a common hold-up.

Conveyancing costs: legal fees of £300 to £1,500 plus disbursements

Independent cost guidance puts conveyancing legal fees for buying a house at between £300 and £1,500, usually linked to the value of the property³. The same guidance gives a slightly different framing of averages: typical conveyancing fees when buying range from around £500 to £1,150, plus disbursements³. A broader cost-of-moving breakdown puts the average conveyancing cost at £1,050 for buying and selling an averagely priced property⁴. A separate analysis of the average cost of moving in England puts the average at £2,182 as of November 2025, a higher figure that reflects the full legal bill on a typical transaction rather than a starting price¹⁰.

On top of the legal fee come disbursements: third-party charges your conveyancer pays on your behalf, such as local authority searches and Land Registry registration, which could cost up to £700³. Local searches alone run from £250 to £450 when buying⁴.

When you pay also follows a pattern: an initial fee is usually paid upfront when the work starts, and the full amount is due on completion⁴. Some schemes can help with the cost. The Help to Stay - Wales scheme covers conveyancing costs up to £1,000 plus VAT for eligible homeowners⁹, and Right to Buy guidance notes that legal costs for a purchase can vary, typically £500 to £700¹¹. The full picture of what buying costs, including tax and surveys, is on the costs of buying a house page.

How long it takes: typically 6 to 8 weeks

Official house price statistics give a typical figure: a house purchase can take 6 to 8 weeks to reach completion⁵. Independent guides give a range of views. One describes the process as taking around 6 weeks if there are no issues or hold-ups, but potentially a few months, particularly in a chain; another gives 6 to 12 weeks as the typical span. The documents differ, so treat 6 to 8 weeks as the typical case and anything from a few months upward as possible when complications arise.

What makes it take longer is usually outside your conveyancer's hands. A chain of linked purchases means everyone moves at the speed of the slowest link. Searches take time to come back from the local authority. Leasehold purchases need information from freeholders or managing agents, who may be slow. Mortgage offers, survey results and scheme administrators, such as Help to Buy, each add their own steps⁶.

The gap between exchange and completion is a separate slice of time within the whole. One guide says completion often takes place around two weeks after exchange, though this is flexible and you agree a convenient date with the seller¹². Another says it usually takes place about four weeks after exchange, although it can be earlier¹³. The narrower question of how long between exchange and completion is covered in its own guide, as is how long buying takes after an offer is accepted.

The conveyancing process step by step

The process in England and Wales runs in a broadly fixed order, though steps overlap in practice. Your offer is accepted, but is not legally binding². You instruct a conveyancer, who takes an initial fee and starts work⁴. The conveyancer checks the title, orders searches, raises enquiries with the seller's conveyancer and reviews your mortgage offer. Once everything is satisfactory, contracts are exchanged and the deal becomes binding¹². On the agreed completion date, the purchase money is sent, the seller releases the keys, and the remaining legal fee falls due⁴. Finally, the conveyancer registers the change of ownership and deals with any property tax.

Where a government scheme is involved, extra steps slot in. With a Help to Buy equity loan, the conveyancer's letter of undertaking and the administrator's Authority to Complete sit between the normal stages⁶. With a Lifetime ISA, the conveyancer is involved in the withdrawal process, and if the purchase does not complete, the conveyancer must provide specified information, including a declaration that the purchase has not completed, the amount of the withdrawal being returned and any shortfall, the account investor's name and address, the Lifetime ISA account number, and the conveyancer's registration number with their professional body¹⁴.

Searches and enquiries: what your conveyancer checks

Searches are the checks your conveyancer makes with outside bodies about the property and its surroundings. Local searches, costing from £250 to £450 when buying, are the core of this⁴. They are disbursements: money your conveyancer pays to third parties and passes on to you, and they can total up to £700 alongside other third-party charges such as Land Registry registration³.

Enquiries are the written questions your conveyancer puts to the seller's conveyancer, based on the title deeds, the seller's property information forms and the search results. The purpose is to surface anything that would affect your decision or your lender's: restrictions on the use of the property, disputes, planning matters, or anything in the title that limits what an owner can do. A covenant is a condition contained in the lease that the buyer must comply with, and a restrictive covenant prohibits the owner from doing something¹, so these are checked before exchange.

Searches are not the same as a survey. A survey looks at the building's condition. The Financial Ombudsman Service, which handles complaints about mortgage valuations and surveys, notes that a full structural survey is likely to be of use if you want to know about possible future expense, want to negotiate a lower purchase price, or want to decide whether to go ahead with the purchase¹⁵. Your conveyancer's searches tell you about the land and the law; a surveyor's report tells you about the bricks.

Leasehold homes add work and cost

Buying a leasehold property means the conveyancer must examine the lease itself: its length, its covenants, the ground rent it charges and any conditions on the property's use. That is more work than a freehold purchase, and it is charged for. Independent guidance says there is usually an additional charge of between £100 and £300 for the extra legal work involved in leasehold sales¹⁰, and other cost guidance puts the extra at around £300 more when buying a leasehold property³.

The lease's remaining length matters for what you are buying. Right to Buy guidance gives an example of how a lease shortens over time: if you buy your home on a 125-year lease and sell it after 15 years, the buyer will get a 110-year lease¹¹. Extending a lease later carries its own costs: on top of the premium for the extra years, a leaseholder may need to pay for legal advice from a solicitor, a lease extension valuation report from a surveyor, the freeholder's reasonable legal and own valuation costs, and Land Registry fees¹⁶. The premium itself depends on the value of the property, the number of years left on the lease, the annual ground rent, the value of improvements paid by the leaseholder, and the expected rate of returns on investments¹⁶.

The full picture of leasehold purchases, including ground rent and service charges, is in the guide to buying a leasehold property, and the comparison of freehold vs leasehold explains the difference in what you own.

Exchange of contracts is the point you are legally bound

Exchange of contracts is the moment the purchase becomes real in law. Official guidance is plain: the exchange of contracts to buy the property is the point where the sale is legally binding². Until then, an offer is not legally binding and either side can withdraw. After exchange, both parties become legally bound to complete the deal and can no longer change their minds without financial repercussions¹.

Mechanically, exchange happens when the buyer's and seller's legal representatives swap signed contracts, and the buyer pays the deposit¹². That deposit is at risk if you then fail to complete, which is why the checks before exchange matter so much: once contracts are exchanged, the enquiries, searches and mortgage arrangements are done, and the only remaining step is paying.

The timing of exchange within the process is worth understanding. Because nothing before exchange is binding, a buyer can spend hundreds of pounds on searches and a survey on a purchase the seller can still withdraw from, or on which they can be gazumped. The guide to what 'subject to contract' means and the page on avoiding gazumping cover this gap and what can be done about it. Buildings insurance is another point that turns on exchange, since the risk in the property typically passes to the buyer there: see when buildings insurance is needed.

Completion: paying the seller and registering the home

Completion is the day the money moves and you get the keys. The remaining legal fee falls due at this point, following the common pattern of an initial fee paid when work started and the full amount due on completion⁴. Your conveyancer sends the purchase money to the seller's conveyancer, the seller releases the keys, and the home becomes yours to live in.

The legal work does not stop there. Your conveyancer pays any property tax due and registers the change of ownership. In England and Northern Ireland, Stamp Duty Land Tax is paid through a return to HMRC, and your conveyancer normally submits it; the SDLT4 form guidance notes that where a transaction involves leases, an extra form is filled in for each lease, and if a transaction involves 100 or more properties a separate schedule is completed for the rest¹⁷. Northern Ireland guidance lists the one-off costs of buying as a solicitor, an independent surveyor, a mortgage arrangement fee, a Land Registry fee and Stamp Duty¹⁸. In England and Northern Ireland, you do not pay Stamp Duty on the first £125,000 of a property's price⁴, and the rates above that are set by HM Treasury: the residential rate for the portion of value in the £0 to £125,000 band is 5% for transactions where that band applies above the threshold from 1 April 2025¹⁹. The detailed rates are on the Stamp Duty Land Tax page.

Registration puts the property in your name at the land registry. The guide to registering ownership after completion covers HM Land Registry, Registers of Scotland and Land & Property Services. Evidence requirements can be strict: Revenue Scotland, for example, accepts a copy of the disposition of sale, a copy of the Land Registration documents, or a letter from your solicitor that clearly states the date of sale, as evidence for reclaiming the Additional Dwelling Supplement²⁰.

Remortgaging still needs conveyancing, but it is quicker

A remortgage is defined in official lending statistics as occurring when existing borrowers redeem their current mortgage in favour of a new one secured on the same property, but with a different mortgage lender²¹. Because the property changes hands in law only in the sense that a new lender takes a charge over it, the conveyancing is narrower than a purchase: there is no seller, no chain and usually no local searches on the same scale. The conveyancer checks the title, deals with redeeming the old mortgage, registers the new lender's charge and handles any equity released.

People remortgage for different reasons. Independent debt guidance notes that remortgaging can improve a borrower's situation in two ways: releasing equity, which is taking a lump sum from the value of the home, or reducing the monthly mortgage payment. It also notes that you can remortgage even if you have debt, and that what matters most is how well you are keeping up with payments to those debts²². Those are the borrower's circumstances, though, not the conveyancing: the legal work is the same either way.

If the remortgage is part of a scheme, extra steps apply. A Help to Buy equity loan repayment, for instance, runs through the conveyancer's letter of undertaking and the administrator's Authority to Complete, just as a purchase does⁶.

Scotland and Northern Ireland work differently

The process described above is the England and Wales one. Scotland works differently, and not only in its land tax, which is Land and Buildings Transaction Tax rather than Stamp Duty²⁰. In Scotland you use a conveyancing solicitor, a type of solicitor that specialises in property purchases, and the solicitor's role is broader at an earlier stage: making offers on properties, communicating with the seller's solicitor, checking the title deeds, negotiating the contract, dealing with the paperwork, transferring funds and taxes, putting the property in your name, and arranging joint ownership if you are buying with someone else⁷. The definition of who is eligible to do the work is set in Scottish legislation, covering solicitors, advocates and conveyancing practitioners⁸. The guide to buying a home in Scotland covers the whole process, including the point at which a Scottish offer becomes binding, which comes much earlier than in England and Wales.

Northern Ireland also differs. The eligible conveyancer there is a person enrolled as a solicitor of the Court of Judicature of Northern Ireland under the Solicitors (Northern Ireland) Order 1976⁸. Official NI guidance walks through buying a home step by step and lists the same categories of one-off cost, including the solicitor, the surveyor, the Land Registry fee and Stamp Duty¹⁸. Exchange of contracts remains the point where the sale is legally binding²³. The guide to buying a home in Northern Ireland sets out the detail.

Wales follows the England process closely, with Land Transaction Tax in place of Stamp Duty, and scheme-specific requirements such as the trained-conveyancer rule for Help to Buy - Wales⁹. See buying a home in Wales.