What conveyancing costs, and how to read a quote

Ask what conveyancing costs and the honest answer is that it depends, which is a deeply unsatisfying thing to be told when you are trying to budget.

So here is something more useful than a number. Almost every unpleasant surprise about conveyancing cost comes from the same misunderstanding, and once you can see it, quotes stop being confusing and start being comparable. This guide is about learning to read one. It applies whether you are buying or selling.

The one thing worth understanding

A conveyancing bill has two parts, and they behave completely differently.

The first is the professional fee. That is what the conveyancer charges for their own work: reading your contract, running the process, managing the conditions, getting you to settlement. They set it. It is the part that genuinely differs between firms, and it is the part you are actually comparing when you compare quotes.

The second is disbursements. These are third-party costs your conveyancer pays on your behalf and passes on to you, things like the searches and certificates your transaction needs, and the fees charged for lodging and settling it. Nobody is choosing to charge you these, and they are largely outside anyone's control.

The useful mental model: the fee pays the person, the disbursements pay everyone else.

Almost every story about a conveyancing bill being higher than expected traces back to comparing one firm's fee against another firm's fee-plus-disbursements. They are not the same number, and a quote that says nothing about disbursements is an incomplete quote rather than a cheap one.

What a fixed fee actually fixes

Fixed-fee conveyancing is common, and it is genuinely reassuring, because it means the professional fee is agreed upfront and will not climb as your file gets busier. You are protected from the clock.

What it usually does not cover is the disbursements, which still sit on top at cost, and it may exclude work the firm treats as non-standard. So a fixed fee gives you certainty over one part of the bill rather than the whole bill. That is not a trick, it is just worth knowing before you assume the number you were quoted is the number you will pay.

The question that settles it is simple, and any firm should answer it without hesitating: is this the total, and if not, what else should I expect?

What sits in each part

That last row matters more than people expect. Transfer duty, where it applies, is usually far larger than the conveyancing itself, and it has nothing to do with which conveyancer you choose. It is worth knowing which number you are actually worrying about.

Where comparing quotes goes wrong

A low headline can hide a higher total. These are the patterns worth watching for.

• Disbursements left off entirely. The fee looks excellent right up until the searches and lodgement costs arrive separately.
• "From" pricing. A starting price built on the simplest imaginable transaction, which may not be yours.
• Exclusions in the fine print. Additional charges for anything the firm decides is non-standard, without much detail on what that means.
• Vague scope. No clear list of what the fee covers, which makes the number impossible to compare against anything.
• Per-item add-ons. Charges for phone calls, emails or file handling that quietly accumulate.

None of these necessarily mean a firm is being dishonest. They do mean you are not yet comparing like with like.

A cheaper quote is not always a cheaper job

It is tempting to treat the lowest number as the answer, and sometimes it genuinely is. But a lower professional fee can reflect a different scope of work, different inclusions, or simply a different way of running the business. None of those are visible in the price itself.

So rather than reading the number, read what it buys. Ask what is included, what is not, and what would make the final bill differ from the quote. Then you are comparing services rather than digits.

What to ask before you engage anyone

• Is this a fixed fee, and exactly what work does it cover?
• Are disbursements included in this figure, or charged on top?
• Can I see an itemised estimate of the likely disbursements for a transaction like mine?
• What could make the final bill higher than this quote?
• Are there per-item or non-standard charges I should know about now?

Ask every firm the same five and the quotes become genuinely comparable, which is most of the work.

Where to find the actual numbers

We have deliberately not put ballpark figures on this page, because conveyancing costs move, they differ by state, and a number that is roughly right is often worse than no number at all when you are budgeting.

What we can point you to is the detail for your situation. Costs differ across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria because the searches and lodgement fees differ, and the explainers below go into what applies where you are.

And when you are ready to compare properly, get the fee and an estimate of disbursements in writing from everyone you are considering. That single request does more than any amount of research.

Our own view, for what it is worth: a quote should tell you the total, not the headline. The professional fee and a realistic estimate of disbursements, in writing, before you commit. If a quote does not give you that, it is not really a quote yet.