UK only. Stamp duty rates assume 2025/26 thresholds for England & Northern Ireland (SDLT), Scotland (LBTT) or Wales (LTT). Pick the country that matches the property you are buying.
UK House Move Cost Calculator
Moving home in the UK costs a lot more than the deposit and the survey, and most of the cost is buried in fees that nobody warns you about until it is too late to flinch. Type your numbers in below, and the calculator adds up the stamp duty (or LBTT in Scotland, LTT in Wales), conveyancing, mortgage fees, survey, removals, EPC and the estate agent if you are selling. The total comes back as a best-case to worst-case range, with every line broken out so you can argue with any of it.
Explain like I'm 5 (what even is this calculator?)
Buying a house has a sticker price, but on top of that there is a long tail of fees that quietly add up to a small car. Some are taxes the government takes (stamp duty, mostly). Some are paid to solicitors, surveyors, lenders and the moving van. This calculator adds them all up so you can see the real number before you start, instead of finding out one bill at a time.
Calculate your move cost
Enter your numbers, then press Calculate.
Itemised breakdown
| Cost | Best case | Likely | Worst case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total | — | — | — |
Prove it
Press Calculate to see the stamp duty band breakdown and every line that fed the total.
Stamp duty is calculated band by band on the property price using the 2025/26 thresholds for the chosen country: SDLT for England & Northern Ireland, LBTT for Scotland, LTT for Wales. First-time buyer relief in England & NI applies up to £500,000 (nil-rate to £300,000, 5% on £300,000 to £500,000). In Scotland the FTB nil-rate band is £175,000. Wales has no first-time buyer relief. Additional-property surcharges are 5% (England & NI), 8% ADS (Scotland) and 5% higher residential (Wales). Other fees are taken from typical UK mid-2025 quotes and shown as a range, with the mid-point used as the headline figure.
What the tool cannot know: linked transactions, mixed-use property, non-UK-resident surcharges (extra 2% on SDLT), leasehold and chain complications that push solicitor fees up, lender product fees that you choose to add to the loan instead of paying upfront, and the small army of incidental costs (locksmith, parking permits, takeaway pizza for the move).
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Where the money actually goes
The headline you remember from buying a house is the deposit. The bit nobody warns you about is the convoy of smaller fees that march in afterwards. Stamp duty (or LBTT, or LTT, depending on which country your new front door is in) is usually the biggest single line and the one with the most political weather around it. Conveyancing is the second-biggest predictable cost, and the one most people skimp on without realising what they have skimped on. Then come the lender fees, the survey, the moving van, the EPC if you are selling, and the estate agent's slice. Each of those individually feels manageable. Stacked together, they often clear five figures before you have unpacked the kettle.
Stamp duty by country, briefly
England and Northern Ireland use Stamp Duty Land Tax. Since 1 April 2025, the nil-rate band is back to £125,000, with 2% to £250,000, 5% to £925,000, 10% to £1.5 million, and 12% above. First-time buyers get a separate, more generous table up to £500,000 (nothing to £300,000, 5% on the slice between £300,000 and £500,000). Above £500,000 the FTB relief vanishes completely, which is the cliff that catches a lot of London buyers. The additional-property surcharge sits at 5% on the whole price (it was 3% until late 2024, hence why older calculators get this wrong).
Scotland charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax with its own bands and an Additional Dwelling Supplement of 8% for second properties. First-time buyers in Scotland get a higher nil-rate band of £175,000 but the bands above that are the standard ones. Wales charges Land Transaction Tax, has no first-time buyer relief at all, and applies a 5% higher-residential surcharge on additional properties. The calculator above picks the right table for you, but if you are crossing borders for work it is worth knowing which one you are walking into.
The fees people forget
The lender valuation is not the same as a survey. The valuation is for the bank, it is brief, and it tells the bank whether their money is safe. The survey is for you, and it is the difference between knowing your roof is fine and finding out the day you move in that it is not. Skipping the survey on a Victorian terrace to save £600 is the false economy nobody admits to until the first big bill lands. A Level 2 homebuyer report is the right default for most modern, unremarkable houses. A Level 3 building survey is what you want for anything older, anything timber-framed, anything with obvious quirks, or anything you intend to extend.
The other fee that catches people is the mortgage product fee, sometimes called an arrangement fee. Lenders advertise the rate, not the fee, and a low rate paired with a £2,000 fee can work out worse than a slightly higher rate with no fee on a smaller loan or a shorter fix. Always price the mortgage on the total cost over the fixed-rate period, not on the headline rate alone.
When to pay extra to spend less later
Two places where paying a bit more upfront usually saves money down the line. First, conveyancing. The cheapest online conveyancers are cheap because they are running a volume operation with junior staff, fixed scripts, and slow turnarounds. On a straightforward freehold purchase in a chain-free situation, that is fine. On a leasehold, a new build with a managing agent, or a chain of three or more, the difference between a £750 conveyancer and a £1,300 one is the difference between completing on time and watching the chain collapse because somebody could not get a phone call returned. Second, removals. A man-and-a-van saves a few hundred quid on the day and costs you a Saturday and probably a friendship. Pay a real removals firm for anything bigger than a flat.
Common mistakes
People budget for the deposit and the stamp duty and assume the rest is small change. It is not. People also forget that if they are selling, the agent fee is paid out of the sale proceeds, which means the cash they thought they had for the deposit on the new place is smaller than the spreadsheet suggested. And people frequently miscount which country they are buying in, especially when buying near the Welsh or Scottish border, because the tax follows the property and not the buyer. Pick the country carefully.
Edge cases
Linked transactions (buying two flats from the same seller, for example) and mixed-use property (a flat above a shop) use different rules and the calculator does not cover them. Non-UK residents pay an extra 2% on SDLT in England and Northern Ireland, again not covered here. Buy-to-let purchases through a limited company follow the additional-property table, with corporation-tax implications on top that a generic calculator cannot estimate. And anything new-build with a Help to Buy tail or a shared-ownership lease has its own fee structure. If any of those apply to you, take the number from this page as a rough opening figure, then talk to a conveyancer who has done the specific thing you are doing.
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Frequently asked questions
What does it actually cost to move house in the UK?
On a typical £400,000 home mover purchase in England with a mortgage, a Level 2 survey, a 3-bed local removal and a sale of a similar-priced home at 1.2% agent fee, the total clears five figures comfortably. Stamp duty is usually the biggest single line. The calculator above breaks every line out so you can see exactly where the money goes.
Why are first-time buyer numbers so different?
First-time buyer relief in England and Northern Ireland zeroes out the SDLT on the first £300,000 and charges 5% on the slice from £300,000 to £500,000. Above £500,000 the relief disappears entirely. Scotland gives FTBs a higher nil-rate band of £175,000. Wales has no first-time buyer scheme at all. The calculator picks the right table based on the country you choose.
Why is there a best-case and worst-case spread?
Most of the costs in a house move are quoted as a range, not a fixed number. Conveyancing varies by firm and by complexity. Mortgage product fees range from zero to about £2,000. Removals depend on volume, day of the week and traffic. The spread shows the realistic best and worst case so you can budget for the worst and be pleasantly surprised. Stamp duty is the one fixed line, calculated band by band.
Does the calculator send my numbers anywhere?
No. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded or stored, and you can disconnect from the network and the figures still work.