What moving house actually costs, line by line

People budget for the deposit and then get surprised eleven more times. None of the other costs is enormous on its own, which is exactly why they are not planned for, and together they routinely add up to more than anyone expected.

Before you offer

A mortgage broker may charge a fee or may be paid by the lender; ask which, because "free" brokers are paid by commission and that is worth knowing either way. The lender may charge an arrangement fee, which can usually be added to the loan — at the cost of paying interest on it for twenty-five years.

A valuation is for the lender's benefit, not yours. A homebuyer's report or a full building survey is for yours, and on an older property it is the single best-value money in the whole process. The cost of a survey is small against the cost of discovering the roof afterwards.

While it goes through

Conveyancing splits into the firm's fee and the disbursements. The fee is often negotiable and varies more than people expect between firms — three quotes is twenty minutes' work. Disbursements are pass-through: local authority searches, environmental and drainage searches, Land Registry fees, electronic transfer charges. Those are what they are.

Then stamp duty, under whichever name applies where you are buying. England and Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each run their own tax with their own thresholds, and all three change. Check the current rate at the time rather than relying on anything written a year ago, including this.

The week itself

Removals vary enormously by whether you pack yourself. Get three quotes and ask specifically about insurance cover and what happens if completion slips by a day, because completion slipping by a day is normal.

Then the small ones that add up: mail redirection, a storage unit if the dates do not line up, a cleaner for the place you are leaving, replacing the things that do not survive the move.

The month after the keys

This is where budgets actually break. New locks, because you do not know who has a key. The appliance that was in the photographs and is not in the kitchen. Curtains and blinds for windows of entirely the wrong size. The first council tax bill, which can be a different band from the one you are used to.

That last one is worth checking before you offer rather than after. Band D in Manchester is £2,312.04 a year, and bands differ enough between neighbouring councils that it can be worth hundreds a year on an otherwise identical house.

The one nobody writes down

Overlap. Two sets of housing costs for two or three weeks, because the chain did not line up. It is common, it is rarely planned for, and it is usually bigger than every survey, search and removal quote put together. Assume it will happen and be pleased if it does not.

Work through a moving checklist →