Most people budget for the removal van and the deposit, then get blindsided by everything in between. The searches, the solicitor’s “disbursements”, the survey that flags something, the stamp duty bill that lands like a second mortgage. If you’re trying to work out what moving actually costs before you commit, this is the honest version, with the numbers we see play out for real families across Leicestershire and the wider East Midlands every week.
None of these figures are set in stone. Where you’re moving, how far, the value of the house and how much you do yourself all shift the total. But by the end of this you’ll have a realistic range to plan around, rather than a nasty surprise on completion day.
The short answer
For a typical home mover in 2026, the all-in cost of moving usually lands somewhere between £8,000 and £14,000 once stamp duty is in the mix, and closer to £3,000 to £5,000 if you’re under the stamp duty threshold or a first-time buyer paying little or none. Strip stamp duty out entirely and the “cost of the move itself”, meaning the fees and the removal, is more like £2,500 to £6,000 for most people.
That’s a wide spread, and the single biggest reason is stamp duty. So let’s start there, because it’s the line that catches people out most.
Stamp Duty: the big one
Stamp Duty Land Tax is what you pay the government when you buy a property in England or Northern Ireland over a certain price. As of 2026 the standard rates for someone moving home (not buying an additional property) work like this: nothing on the first £125,000, then 2% on the slice from £125,001 to £250,000, 5% from £250,001 to £925,000, 10% from £925,001 to £1.5 million, and 12% on anything above that.
First-time buyers get a better deal: no stamp duty up to £300,000, then 5% on the portion from £300,001 to £500,000, with the relief disappearing entirely once the price passes £500,000.
Here’s what that means in practice. Buy a £280,000 home as a mover and your stamp duty is £4,000. Buy the same house as a first-time buyer and it’s zero. The gap is real money, and it’s worth running your own figure through the government’s SDLT calculator before you fall in love with anything, because a £10,000 difference in asking price can quietly cost you a couple of thousand in tax once you cross a threshold.
Estate agent fees
If you’re selling as well as buying, the estate agent is usually your second-largest cost after stamp duty. High-street agents typically charge somewhere between 1% and 3.5% of the sale price plus VAT, and the truth is the headline percentage matters less than what’s in the small print. On a £275,000 sale, 1.25% plus VAT works out around £4,125.
Online and fixed-fee agents can bring that down to a flat few hundred or low thousands, but you tend to take on more of the legwork yourself: the viewings, the chasing, the negotiation. Some people love that. Others would rather pay for someone to handle it. Neither is wrong, it just depends on how much time and patience you’ve got.
Conveyancing and legal fees
Your solicitor or licensed conveyancer handles the legal side of buying and selling. Budget roughly £800 to £1,800 for buying, and a similar amount again if you’re also selling, so it’s not unusual for the combined legal bill to sit around £1,500 to £3,000 once you add the extras.
And there are always extras. These are the “disbursements”: local authority searches (around £250 to £450), Land Registry fees, bank transfer fees, and so on. A quote that looks suspiciously cheap has usually left some of these off, so ask for the total including disbursements, not the come-on figure.
Surveys
Skipping the survey to save a few hundred pounds is one of the few genuine false economies in moving. A basic RICS Level 1 survey starts at around £300 to £500 and suits a newer, straightforward property. A Level 2 HomeBuyer report, the most common choice, runs roughly £400 to £1,000. For anything older, extended, or a bit unusual, a full Level 3 building survey is £600 to £1,500 or more.
One survey that flags a roof or a bit of damp can save you thousands, or hand you a proper negotiating card on price. We’ve seen plenty of Leicester buyers knock five figures off an offer on the back of a survey. That’s a strong return on a few hundred quid.
Mortgage costs
If you need a mortgage, factor in an arrangement or product fee, which can be anything from nothing to around £2,000 depending on the deal, plus a valuation the lender may charge for (often £150 to £1,500, though many now include a basic one free). A mortgage broker might charge a fee too, or might be paid by the lender. Worth asking upfront which it is.
The removal itself
This is our world, so we’ll be straight with you about it. For a local move within Leicestershire, a one or two-bedroom home usually costs somewhere around £300 to £600 to move, a three-bedroom house more like £600 to £1,000, and a larger four or five-bed property £1,000 upwards. Distance pushes it up: a long-distance move across the country, or one that needs an overnight, naturally costs more than a ten-mile hop from Oadby to Wigston.
Packing is the other variable. Do it yourself and you save on labour but spend on boxes and time. Ask our crews to pack for you and it costs more, but a professional pack for a whole house is often done in a day, properly, with the fragile things wrapped the way they should be. For a lot of families with jobs and children, that day is worth every penny.
The honest bit most removal firms won’t tell you: the cheapest quote is rarely the cheapest move. A firm that under-quotes on hours, turns up with one van when it needed two, or isn’t properly insured can cost you far more in a long day, a second trip, or a broken sideboard than the £150 you saved on the estimate. Always check the quote is based on an actual survey of what you’re moving, whether that’s one of our surveyors walking the house or a proper video call, not a guess off the number of bedrooms.
The bits everyone forgets
These are small on their own and add up fast. Royal Mail redirection starts at around £45 to send your post on for three months, which is cheap insurance against your bank statements landing on a stranger’s doormat. An EPC, if your seller doesn’t already have a valid one, is roughly £35 to £120. Then there’s the cleaning, the odd new appliance because the old fridge won’t fit the new alcove, the takeaway on the first night because you can’t find the kettle, and a month or two of overlapping bills if your dates don’t line up perfectly.
If there’s a gap between moving out and moving in, or the new place isn’t ready, short-term storage bridges it. That’s more common than people expect, and it’s usually cheaper and calmer than trying to force two chains to complete on the exact same afternoon.
A worked example: a £280,000 move in Leicester
Say you’re selling a house and buying a three-bedroom home in Leicester for £280,000, with a mortgage, using a high-street agent to sell at £250,000. Roughly: stamp duty £4,000, estate agent fees around £3,750 including VAT, legal fees for both sides around £2,200, a Level 2 survey £600, mortgage and valuation fees say £500, the removal with a half-day pack around £950, and £200 of redirection, cleaning and odds and ends. That’s a shade over £12,000, with stamp duty and the agent making up more than half of it.
Change one thing, say you’re a first-time buyer with nothing to sell, and the same purchase drops by the stamp duty and the entire estate agent fee. Suddenly you’re looking at closer to £4,000 all in. Same house, very different bill, which is exactly why a generic “average cost of moving” number is close to useless until you plug in your own situation.
Where you can actually save
Two things move the needle more than clipping coupons. First, get your timing and your threshold right: a small change in offer price near a stamp duty band, or completing before a rate deadline, can be worth thousands. Second, get accurate quotes rather than cheap ones. That goes for your solicitor, your agent and your removals. An accurate quote you can trust means no surprise on the day, and no surprise is worth more than a headline discount.
If you’d like a removals figure you can actually budget around, one based on a proper look at what you’re moving rather than a number plucked from the air, our team covers Leicester, Loughborough, Hinckley, Market Harborough, Melton Mowbray and across Leicestershire into Rutland and north Northamptonshire. Get in touch for a free, no-pressure quote and we’ll talk you through your part of the move honestly, including the bits other firms leave off the estimate.
For the removals cost on its own, our detailed guide to how much removals cost in Leicester breaks the figures down further. Moving a business rather than a home? See office removal costs. And if your dates don’t line up, here’s what storage during a house move tends to cost.