The useful number is not the total
Every moving cost calculator adds everything up and gives you one figure. That figure hides the distinction that matters, which is when each piece of money leaves your account and whether you get it back if the sale dies.
The survey, the local searches, the mortgage valuation and most of the conveyancing all happen while the sale is still an intention. Nobody has exchanged. Anyone in the chain can walk away. If they do, that money is gone, and the next attempt starts from zero with the same bills to pay again.
Everything else, the stamp duty, the agent's commission, the removals, only becomes payable once it is happening. That is committed money rather than money at risk, and the two should not sit in the same total without comment.
So this tool splits them. The at-risk figure tells you how many failed attempts you can afford, a genuinely useful thing to know before you commission a survey on a property with a long chain behind it.
The deposit is not the cost of moving
This is the most common budgeting failure on a house purchase and it is almost universal among first-time buyers.
The deposit gets planned carefully, saved for over years, and worked out to the pound. Then several thousand pounds of fees arrives as a surprise, in cash, on top, and almost none of it can come out of the mortgage. A lender arrangement fee can usually be added to the loan; the survey, searches, legal work, stamp duty and removals cannot.
The lines people forget
Most of the cost of a move is not surprising. What catches people is the long tail of small things that nobody mentions until they appear on a completion statement.
- Land Registry fee. A scaled fee on the purchase price, paid through your solicitor, easy to miss because it arrives inside their bill rather than as its own line.
- Indemnity policies. One-off insurances for a missing building regulation certificate or a similar gap in the paperwork. Small, common, and in nobody's budget.
- Appliances. The seller takes the fridge, the washing machine and quite often the curtains and light fittings. Read the fixtures and fittings form before completion rather than after.
- Storage. The cost of a chain that does not line up. Worth pricing before you need it rather than in the week you find out you do.
- Changing the locks. You have no idea how many keys exist or who has them.
Two things worth reading properly
The estate agency agreement. Commission is a percentage plus VAT, and the VAT gets left out of the mental arithmetic every time. More importantly, sole agency, sole selling rights and multi agency are three different things. Sole selling rights can leave you owing commission even where you found the buyer yourself, which is a surprise nobody enjoys.
The conveyancing quote. Ask whether it is no completion, no fee. Most are not, and even where they are, the disbursements, the searches and the fees paid out on your behalf, are never refundable. That is the at-risk money, so know its size before it is spent.
Removals are priced on access, not distance
A third floor flat with no lift costs more to move out of than a house twice the distance away with a driveway at both ends. Volume and access are what the price is built from, and neither is visible from a postcode.
Get the firm to survey properly, in person or by video, rather than quoting off a bedroom count. A quote given over the phone from a description is a quote that changes on the day, and the day is the worst possible time to be renegotiating.
Why there are no prices in this tool
Conveyancing, surveys and removals vary enormously by firm, by region and by property. Any average printed here would be inventing the one part of this exercise that has to come from an actual quote.
What the tool does instead is make sure there is a line for everything, including the ones that get forgotten, and then sort those lines by when the money goes and whether you get it back. That is the part a spreadsheet of averages cannot do for you.
Stamp duty is the one exception, and it is not duplicated here either. It has its own tool with the real bands in it, which knows that England, Wales and Scotland run three genuinely different taxes rather than three rates of the same one. Work it out there and paste the figure in.
Common questions
How much of the cost of moving is lost if the sale falls through?
More than people expect, and it is the number nobody shows you. The survey, the local searches, the mortgage valuation and most of the conveyancing all happen while the sale is still an intention. If the chain collapses that money is gone and the next attempt starts from zero. This tool splits the total into what is at risk and what is only payable if it completes, because those two behave completely differently.
Do I need the fees on top of my deposit?
Yes, in cash, and almost none of it can come out of the mortgage. The deposit gets planned to the pound while the fees, several thousand pounds of them, arrive as a surprise. The deposit is not the cost of moving.
Is estate agent commission the percentage I was quoted?
Plus VAT, which is routinely left out of the mental arithmetic. It is also worth checking whether the agreement is sole agency, sole selling rights or multi agency, because they are not the same thing. Sole selling rights can leave you owing commission even where you found the buyer yourself.
Why is my removal quote higher than a longer move?
Because removals are priced on volume and access rather than distance. A third floor flat with no lift costs more than a longer move with a driveway at both ends. Get the firm to survey properly rather than quoting off a bedroom count, since a quote given over the phone is a quote that changes on the day.
What slows down a leasehold sale?
The management pack, nearly always. The freeholder or managing agent charges for it, takes their own time producing it, and nothing can proceed without it. Order it the day you instruct rather than waiting for the buyer to ask, because it is a delay that is entirely avoidable and almost never avoided.
Why does the tool not tell me what a survey costs?
Because conveyancing, surveys and removals vary enormously by firm, region and property, and an average here would mean inventing the only figure that has to be quoted. What the tool does is make sure you have a line for everything, including the ones people forget, so nothing arrives as a surprise.