How much does it cost to sell a house in the UK? (2026 breakdown)

Cold open

Selling a house sounds simple, doesn't it? Find a buyer, shake hands, get paid. Except you're the one selling, and somehow you're the one who ends up several thousand pounds lighter before you've even picked up the keys to wherever you're going next.

Nobody hands you an itemised bill when you decide to sell. So that's what we're doing today — I'm going to build the actual, honest receipt for selling a house in the UK, one line at a time, so you know exactly what's coming before it turns up.

Stick with me to the end, because once every line's on this receipt, I'm going to add the whole thing up — and if you've already got a number in your head, I'd be curious whether it's higher or lower than what it actually comes to.

1. Estate Agent Fees

First line on the receipt, and by far the biggest: estate agent fees. If you go with one agent — sole agency — you're typically looking at somewhere between 0.9% and 3.5% of the sale price, averaging out at around 1.42% including VAT. Use several agents at once and you'll usually pay more, averaging around 3 to 3.6%, because you're paying for the privilege of a bidding war between them.

On an average UK home, say around £280,000, that 1.42% average works out at just under £4,000. Just to be introduced to someone who wants to buy your house.

That fee's meant to cover photography, floorplans, your listing on Rightmove and Zoopla, and someone handling viewings and negotiations for you. Worth actually asking what's included, because some agents bundle all of it in, and some will happily charge you extra for photos that don't look like they were taken on a flip phone.

And it's not just the online listing — if you want a physical 'for sale' board outside the house, or a spot in a local property brochure or newspaper, some agents fold that into the fee, and some charge separately. Worth asking, because it's easy to assume it's all bundled in when it isn't.

One more thing genuinely worth checking before you sign anything: is this a 'no sale, no fee' arrangement, or do you pay regardless? Most high street agents only charge you if your house actually sells. Some online agents charge an upfront fee to list and market your property whether or not it ever does — which is a very different risk to be taking on, and worth knowing before you commit.

Quietly worth knowing: this entire line disappears completely if you sell directly instead of through an agent. No commission, because there's no agent. We'll come back to that properly at the end.

2. Conveyancing and Legal Fees

Second line: conveyancing. Nobody gets excited about paying a solicitor, but you legally cannot sell a house without one, so onto the receipt it goes.

Legal fees for selling typically run somewhere between about £600 and £1,800, depending on your solicitor, your property's value, and where you are in the country. On top of that, there are disbursements — the bits your solicitor pays to other people on your behalf, like the Land Registry, and if you're selling a leasehold property, expect a few hundred pounds more for the extra legal admin that involves.

And here's the other quietly useful thing to know: with a direct sale, legal costs are very often covered for you. Another line that can just disappear off the receipt entirely.

3. The Energy Performance Certificate

Third line, and it's the cheapest thing on this entire list — the EPC. You're legally required to have one before your house goes on the market, and it'll cost somewhere between £60 and £120, unless you already have a valid one, since they last ten years.

Genuinely, check if you've already got one before you pay for a new one — it's on the government's register, and plenty of people pay twice for something they already had.

4. Mortgage Costs

Fourth line, and this one's situational — it might not apply to you at all. If you're moving to a similarly priced or cheaper home, you can often just "port" your existing mortgage across, which mostly means a valuation and an affordability check.

But if you're selling before your current deal ends, you could face an early repayment charge — typically somewhere between 1% and 5% of what you've still got left to pay, plus sometimes a smaller admin fee on top. It's worth checking your mortgage terms properly before you set a completion date, because this one can genuinely catch people out.

And while we're on mortgages — moving is actually a decent moment to check whether remortgaging makes sense too, especially if you've drifted onto your lender's standard variable rate without noticing. It's not really a cost, more a chance to claw a bit of money back in the middle of an otherwise expensive process. Worth a quick word with a mortgage broker while everything else is already in motion.

5. Getting the House "Sale Ready"

Fifth line, and this is the one with no fixed price, because it entirely depends on how far you take it. This is where people do the most damage to their own bank balance, entirely voluntarily.

It's genuinely common for sellers to look at their kitchen or bathroom and think, right, if I'm selling, I should redo this properly first. Sometimes that's the right call. Often, it isn't — you can spend thousands on a renovation and get back only a fraction of it in the final price, because the buyer who eventually falls in love with your house might have wanted a completely different kitchen anyway.

We've actually made a whole separate video on exactly which repairs and updates are worth doing before you sell, and which ones genuinely aren't — well worth watching before you spend a penny on this line. The short version for today: talk to your agent, or to us, before committing to anything big. A really honest answer might just be "don't bother."

6. Removals and the Miscellaneous Drawer

Sixth line: actually moving your stuff. Removal costs depend heavily on how much you've got and how far you're going, but as a rough guide, a smaller move might be a few hundred pounds, and a bigger household moving further can run well over a thousand.

And then there's what I'd call the miscellaneous drawer — the costs nobody puts on a checklist because nobody can predict them. Packing materials. Replacing a piece of furniture you gave away assuming you wouldn't need it. Storage, if there's a gap between selling and moving in somewhere new. None of it's huge on its own, but it's real, and it's worth keeping a bit of a buffer for.

7. Capital Gains Tax

Seventh line, and for most people selling the home they actually live in, this one's genuinely zero. There's something called Private Residence Relief, and it means your main home is normally exempt from Capital Gains Tax entirely.

Where it does matter is if you're selling a second home, a rental property, or somewhere you haven't actually lived in for a while — then any profit above your tax-free allowance can be taxed, and the rate depends on your income and how much you've gained. If that might apply to you, it's genuinely worth a proper conversation with an accountant before you sell, not after.

8. Adding It All Up

So, the actual honest receipt, for an average sale through an estate agent, on your own main home: agent fees around £4,000, conveyancing around £900, the EPC about £90, removals around £600, Capital Gains Tax at £0 for most people — and that's before we even talk about however much you decide to spend getting the place ready.

So — remember right at the start, I said I'd be curious whether the number in your head was higher or lower than this? Let's actually find out.

Most UK sellers end up somewhere between five and ten thousand pounds, all in. That's the number nobody tells you at the start, and it's exactly why it's worth knowing the whole receipt before you commit to anything.

So that's the real, itemised cost of selling a house in the UK — hopefully a bit less painful than expected, and now with no surprises left.

9. What Springbok actually does

Right, I said I'd come back to this properly, so here it is, plainly: we're Springbok Properties, and we buy houses directly.

With our Cash Sale and Fast Cash routes, that's genuinely us buying with our own money — no estate agent, no commission, no listing, no viewings to prep the house for. Realistically that's around 80% of market value, completing in 7 to 21 days once it's agreed — you're trading some of that final number for speed and certainty, and we're upfront about that trade-off.

We've also got a Fixed Price route, which works differently — we match you with a real, vetted buyer, which can get you closer to full market value, up to around 95%. That one takes longer: typically 4 to 8 weeks to agree, with conveyancing adding a further 1 to 3 months on top before it completes — closer to a private sale timeline.

Either way, legal costs are typically covered, and there's no agent fee at all — so a good chunk of the receipt we just built together simply doesn't apply.

This isn't right for everyone, and I'd never pretend it is. If you've got time, a strong local market, and getting the maximum possible price matters more than anything else, the open market — with the receipt we just went through — is still a completely reasonable way to go. But if speed, certainty, or just not wanting to deal with estate agents dragging an open market sale, and all the hassle that comes with it, matters more, it's worth knowing this exists as a genuine option.

Close

If you want to see what a direct offer would actually look like for your own property, there's a free, no-obligation one on our website, no pressure either way. Thanks for watching.