This content applies to Scotland only.

Housing laws vary between Scotland and England. Get advice relating to England

When you buy a home, you will need to pay for a solicitor to carry out the legal work involved. You will also need to pay for a valuation and survey of the property you want to buy.

Solicitor's fees

If you are buying a new home, you will need a solicitor to carry out the legal work involved (this is called conveyancing) and you will have to pay for this service. It is difficult to predict how much this will cost you but fees can run into thousands. You can ask solicitors for a fee quote. This will give you an idea of how much their fees will be but be aware that you might be charged more if your purchase becomes more complicated or takes longer to finalise.

Shop around before you appoint anybody and make sure you find out:

• whether the solicitor charges a fixed fee or whether their fee depends on how much work they have to do
• what the fee includes, for example, does it cover stamp duty, registration fees, expenses, VAT and any other outlays?
• how much you will have to pay them if the sale falls through.

As a guide, you should expect to pay around £1,000 in legal fees if you are buying a property for £100,000.

If you are buying and selling properties at the same time, using the same solicitor for both transactions might help to save money.

Read the page on finding a solicitor to find out more, including what you can do if you think their bill is unreasonably high.

Outlays

Sometimes solicitors will have to pay out various expenses to do all the legal work involved in buying your house. This might include the cost of obtaining copies of deeds or charges payable to your mortgage lender for setting up and processing your mortgage. These additional costs are called outlays and will be included on the bill you get from your solicitor after you have bought your house.

Outlays are not part of the money you are paying to the solicitor for the legal work. They are incidental costs that have to be paid to process the conveyancing on your behalf. Stamp duty and registration dues are also classed as outlays although they are usually listed separately on the bill.

Valuation fee

If the property you want to buy doesn't have a home report, or your lender will not accept the valuation in the home report, your lender may need to carry out their own valuation of the property before making you a formal mortgage offer. A valuation is a basic overview, designed to ascertain how much the property is worth.

The cost of the valuation will depend on the size and age of the property, but is usually around £100. You'll probably be charged for it, but may get the money refunded when you take out the mortgage. Some lenders offer free valuations, while many will use the results of the survey (see below) rather than commissioning a separate valuation.

Survey

If the property you're buying doesn't have a home report, you'll need to get a survey done, to make sure there aren't any problems with it. Sometimes your mortgage lender will organise a separate survey. The cost will depend on the kind of survey you require. For most properties, a home buyer's report is sufficient. This can cost anything from around £250-£500, depending on how big the property is and how detailed a survey you want. If the property is very old or unusual, you may need to get a full structural survey carried out. These start from around £450.

The page on valuations and surveys has more information on what the different kinds of survey involve.