If you've started looking into remortgaging, you've probably already seen wildly different numbers floating around for "solicitor fees" — anywhere from nothing at all (if your lender offers a free legal service) to several hundred pounds if you instruct your own solicitor. Neither figure tells you the full story, and the cheapest-looking option on paper isn't always the cheapest, or the best, option in practice. This guide breaks down exactly what a remortgage solicitor's fee covers, what else you'll pay alongside it, and how to work out which route actually makes sense for your situation.
What does a remortgage solicitor actually do for the fee?
It's worth starting here, because the fee only makes sense once you understand the work behind it. When you remortgage, your new lender is releasing a significant sum of money secured against your home, and before they'll do that, an independent solicitor has to confirm several things on their behalf: that the title is free of anything that would put their security at risk, that your existing mortgage is properly redeemed on completion day, and that their own charge is correctly registered afterwards at HM Land Registry.
In practice, that fee covers:
- Title investigation — checking the Land Registry title for restrictions, old charges, boundary notes, or anything else that could complicate the new mortgage
- Liaising with your current lender to obtain a redemption statement (the exact figure needed to pay off your existing mortgage on completion day, including interest to that date)
- Reporting to your new lender confirming every condition of their mortgage offer has been satisfied
- Managing completion — the same-day movement of funds, redemption of the old mortgage, and registration of the new charge
- Post-completion registration at HM Land Registry, and confirming the registration has gone through cleanly
None of this is optional or padding — a lender genuinely will not release funds without it, regardless of who's doing the legal work.
The full cost breakdown — legal fee, disbursements, and Land Registry fees
A remortgage bill is usually made up of three separate elements, and it's worth understanding each one because they behave differently:
1. The solicitor's legal fee. This is the fee for the actual legal work described above, usually scaled to your property's value. It typically sits somewhere in the low hundreds of pounds for a straightforward residential remortgage, though it will be higher if there's additional complexity — a transfer of equity alongside it, a leasehold property requiring extra checks, or a buy-to-let with multiple parties on the title.
2. Disbursements. These are third-party costs your solicitor pays out on your behalf and passes on at cost — they shouldn't have a markup. The main ones for a remortgage are:
- Land Registry registration fee, set by the government on a sliding scale based on property value
- Land Registry search / priority search fee, a small charge to confirm no last-minute changes to the title before completion
- Bankruptcy search fees for each named borrower, a standard anti-fraud check
- Telegraphic transfer fee, covering the cost of sending the mortgage redemption funds securely and same-day
- Occasionally, local authority or environmental search fees, if your specific lender requires updated searches rather than accepting your existing ones or an indemnity policy
3. VAT, applied to the legal fee (and to some disbursements) at the standard rate.
A reputable firm will give you all three elements as one combined quote before you instruct them, so there's nothing to discover later — if a quote looks unusually low, it's worth checking whether it's genuinely the full picture or just the headline legal fee with disbursements to follow.
"Free legal fees" from your lender — what's the catch?
Many lenders advertise a free legal service as an incentive to remortgage with them, and it's a genuinely attractive-looking offer at first glance. The catch, and it is a real one, is whose solicitor is doing the work.
Under a free legal service, the solicitor is chosen by the lender and acts for the lender first, and for you only as a secondary consideration, if at all — in many cases, the solicitor acts solely for the lender, and you're not their client in a legal sense. Practically, this tends to mean:
- No direct contact with the solicitor — you deal with a call centre or portal rather than a named person who knows your file
- Slower turnaround, because these firms are processing very high volumes
- Less flexibility if your situation is anything other than the most straightforward like-for-like switch — a transfer of equity, a leasehold complication, or a Help to Buy postponement can be handled clumsily or slowly
- No one genuinely on your side if something goes wrong or needs judgment calls made in your interest rather than the lender's
For a very simple, low-value remortgage with nothing unusual about it, the free option can work out fine. For anything with even a little complexity — which includes most leasehold properties, most buy-to-lets, and any remortgage involving a change of ownership — paying for your own solicitor buys you someone who is actually acting for you.
What makes remortgage fees higher or lower?
- Property value. Both the legal fee and the Land Registry registration fee scale with the value of the property.
- Leasehold vs freehold. Leasehold properties involve additional checks — lease length, ground rent terms, notifying the freeholder or managing agent of the new charge — which typically adds to the fee.
- Combined transactions. If you're doing a transfer of equity alongside the remortgage, that's additional legal work, though bundling it with the remortgage is usually cheaper than running two entirely separate instructions.
- Buy-to-let and portfolio remortgages. Investment properties, particularly those held in a limited company or remortgaged as part of a portfolio, involve extra checks and sometimes extra registration steps.
- Help to Buy equity loans. A Deed of Postponement is a specific, additional piece of work not all firms are set up to handle efficiently.
- New searches vs indemnity insurance. Some lenders will accept an indemnity insurance policy in place of fresh searches, which is usually cheaper and faster.
Questions worth asking before you instruct a solicitor
- Is the quote you've been given the complete cost, including disbursements and VAT, or just the headline legal fee?
- If your lender is offering a free legal service, who does the solicitor actually act for — you, or the lender?
- Does the quote change if your situation includes a transfer of equity, a leasehold property, or equity release?
- How will you be kept updated, and will you have a named point of contact rather than a general inbox?
What we charge
We quote a single fixed fee covering the legal work, disbursements, and VAT together, based on your property value — so the figure you're given at the outset is the figure you pay, with no surprises at completion. Fees start from £250 + VAT. See our full fixed-fee breakdown and get an instant quote on our remortgage solicitors page, or call us on 01628 777233 to talk it through.
