Countries · United Kingdom
What to check in the United Kingdom before you sign.
An agreement is not binding. Either side can walk away for no reason and no cost before contracts exchange. That sinks a quarter to a third of all sales.
What costs the most money in the United Kingdom
In England and Wales nothing is legally binding until the exchange of contracts. Agree a price and you can still be outbid (gazumping), with nobody refunding the valuation, survey and legal fees you have already paid. Industry figures for 2025 put failed sales at 24 to 30 percent across the year, and higher in some quarters.
Scotland does not have this problem in the same form; there acceptance binds far earlier.
Source: HomeOwners Alliance and surveys on sale fall-through rates, 2025
Purchase costs
0 to 12% stamp duty plus roughly £1,100 to £4,200 in fixed costs
of the purchase price, on top of the price in the listing.
- Stamp duty, England and Northern Ireland, by purchase price0, 2, 5, 10 or 12%
- Stamp duty for first-time buyersnone up to £300,000
- Stamp duty, surcharge from the second home5 percentage points
- Solicitor for the conveyancing£500 to £1,150
- Disbursements and searches£250 to £450
- Land Registry fee, official scale£45 to £1,105, online £20 to £500
- Survey, levels 1 to 3£300 to £1,500
- Estate agent commissionpaid by the seller
Source: Stamp duty follows HM Revenue and Customs rates for England and Northern Ireland. Land Registry fees follow Scale 1 of HM Land Registry, and the remaining items come from the HomeOwners Alliance, 2026. Two things are different here. The largest item is the tax, not the commission, and the seller pays it. Almost all the remaining items are fixed amounts. Scotland and Wales have their own bands.
The trap for tenants
Damp is not the exception in the rental market, it is the rule. In one home in ten, that means 10 percent of privately rented homes have a damp problem, against 4 percent of owner occupied homes. That is two and a half times as often.
Across the country, four million homes, 15 percent of the stock, failed the Decent Homes Standard in 2024. At a viewing you see freshly painted walls, not the cause behind them.
Energy and the duty to renovate
An EPC (bands A to G) is required for both sale and letting, and the band must appear in the listing itself. In the private rented sector you may only let from band E upwards. At F or G the fine runs to £5,000 per property.
The landlord must also spend up to £3,500 of their own money on improvements before an exemption can be entered on the national register. Owner-occupiers face no duty to renovate.
Certificate validity: 10 years
What to watch for in the United Kingdom in particular
For years, new-build homes were sold as leasehold with a clause that doubled the ground rent at fixed intervals. What sounded like a small annual fee in the sales conversation was a curve in the title deed.
Those affected were stuck in houses they could neither sell nor mortgage, and anyone who fell behind with the ground rent risked losing the lease. The Competition and Markets Authority has been investigating this since 2019. By its own account, it has freed more than 21,000 households from these clauses, most recently in March 2024.
Whether leasehold or freehold applies is stated in the title deed, not in the listing.
Source: Competition and Markets Authority, Emma Cochrane, 27.01.2026
Official maps in the United Kingdom
4 map layers lie directly over your property.
Not as an average for the district, but at your exact address, with a legend and a visible source. Every layer can be switched on separately.
Check it yourself
The official bodies in the United Kingdom.
These bodies are grouped by category: property and encumbrances, energy, natural hazards and more. The report on your property names the responsible bodies, with the date checked and a link. A figure you cannot verify is not a figure, it is a claim.
over 300
official data sources
4
categories
What this costs
3.5%
below the price in the listing is what homes actually sold for in the first quarter of 2026, on average £18,800 less. 44 percent of the homes listed since 2023 found no buyer at all.
Source: Zoopla, a property portal, analysis of 13 May 2026. The portal uses the figures to argue for more careful asking prices. Asking prices, not signed contracts
4.0m
homes in England fail the government's minimum standard for housing quality, that is 15 percent. 1.4 million have a problem with damp.
Source: English Housing Survey 2024/25 of the UK housing ministry, published 29 January 2026, survey year 2024
These numbers arise after the signature. The report does the maths before it.
The market in the United Kingdom
Around 98,700 homes change hands in a single month, plus 10,300 commercial properties. Between April and June 2026 there were 282,010 residential completions in three months. The tax authority counts completions and publishes no monetary volume.
Source: HM Revenue and Customs, Monthly property transactions, 06/2026, 31.07.2026
A real dossier from this country
See what the analysis found on an actual listing in the United Kingdom — every figure with its source.
Open the example dossierOther countries