The cost of selling a house in the UK

Three sources publish an average and none of them agrees with the others, so take the spread rather than a single number. The HomeOwners Alliance puts the 2026 average at 1.42% including VAT, which on your £293,000 sale is about £4,160. Which?, updated in June 2026 and citing Rightmove data for 2025, says the average seller paid roughly 1.3% including VAT, or about £3,810 on the same sale. MoneySavingExpert quotes the high street at 0.75% to 3% plus VAT and works that out as £2,700 to £10,800 on a £300,000 property.

The honest headline is a central estimate of 1.3% to 1.42% including VAT, and a quoted range far wider than that. The HomeOwners Alliance figures put the full spread at 0.9% to 3.6%, which on your sale price is anywhere from about £2,640 to about £10,550. Where you land inside it depends on three things: the contract you sign, how many agents you instruct, and how hard you push.

Sole agency, where one agent markets your home, typically runs 1.2% to 1.8% including VAT. Multi-agency, where several compete, runs 3% to 3.6%, because only the winner gets paid and the price reflects that. On your £293,000 sale the difference between the two is a flat £5,270 at every point of the range, and multi-agency only earns its keep if it genuinely finds you a better buyer.

Always ask whether the quote includes VAT, because the two ways of writing it are not the same number. A fee of 1.2% plus VAT is 1.44% of your sale price. A fee of 1.3% including VAT is 1.3%. The rules require your agent to tell you what you will pay, when it becomes payable and what else gets charged on top. That has to happen before you sign anything, so get all of it in writing.

Watch the extras, because they sit outside the headline percentage. Premium portal listings, professional photography, a floorplan and a withdrawal fee if you take the house off the market are all charged separately by some agents. One national fixed-fee agent's own price page, in August 2026, listed an £80 anti-money-laundering check outside its headline price. Ask for the total, in pounds, on the sale you are actually expecting.

You can, and nothing in law stops you. Selling your own home is not estate agency, so none of the licensing and redress machinery that binds an agent applies to you. What you cannot do is prepare the transfer deed for a fee, which is why almost everybody still uses a conveyancer for that part.

On the headline the saving is real. MoneySavingExpert's July 2026 round-up puts named online providers between £129 and £1,599 as a fixed fee, and Which? gives the wider market band as £300 to £1,500. That is the online-agent route, the one that gets your home on to the portals. Against £4,160 of commission on your £293,000 sale, a £999 fixed fee plus the £80 identity check leaves you about £3,081 better off. Skip the agent altogether and a private listing package is £0 to £400, which puts more cash on the table and all of the work on you.

Then read the small print, because that is where the fixed-fee models differ from each other. Some want the money up front and keep it whether or not you sell. Some take a deposit and the balance on completion. Some defer the whole fee, and a deferred fee that falls due on a date rather than on completion is a different animal from one that does not. Which? puts accompanied viewings at around £300 extra, and notes that the default on most of these services is that you do the viewings yourself.

Nobody can tell you honestly whether you end up ahead, and you should be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. There is no current independent dataset showing whether online sellers achieve a lower price than high street ones. Which? points out that a flat fee gives an agent less reason to chase the top of your range. Providers say they usually hit the asking price. Those are positions, not evidence. If saving £3,000 on the fee costs you £5,000 on the price, you are worse off.

Cheaper on paper is not the same as better off, and each of these routes moves the cost somewhere you might not be looking for it.

A traditional auction gives you certainty, because the contract is made when the hammer falls and your buyer cannot walk away. One auction house published its commission as 2% to 3% plus VAT in August 2026, with a minimum fee from £1,500. On your £293,000 sale that is roughly £7,030 to £10,550 including VAT, which is more than a high street agent. You are paying for speed and a binding buyer, not for a lower fee.

The modern method of auction looks free to you, because the buyer pays. The HomeOwners Alliance records the reservation fee as usually at least 2.5% plus VAT, or a minimum of £6,000 including VAT. On a £293,000 home that is around £8,790, and your buyer has to find it on top of what they bid. That narrows your pool of buyers and drags on the price they can offer. The timetable is typically 28 days to exchange and another 28 to complete.

Part-exchange with a housebuilder saves you the commission and the chain, and pays for it with the offer. The developer prices in a discount to the open market value, and that discount is usually far larger than the fee you avoided. It is a genuine arm's length sale, so if the property is taxable the lower price genuinely reduces your gain, which is one of the very few consolations.

Not if the place has been your only or main home for the whole time you owned it. That covers most sellers. You do pay on a buy to let, a second home or a holiday place. You also pay, on part of the gain, if you lived in the property for some of the time you owned it and let it out for the rest.

Your selling costs come off the gain, so the agent you have been arguing with is partly paid for by the tax you no longer owe. Sell a former rental for £300,000, a round number rather than the £293,000 average used above, and commission at 1.42% including VAT is £4,260. Add £700 of conveyancing and you have £4,960 coming off the gain, which is worth just under £1,200 at the higher residential rate. Because you cannot reclaim the VAT, you deduct the gross fee, not the amount before VAT.

The list of costs that qualify is a closed one, and it is shorter than most people assume. In go your agent's commission, your solicitor's fees on the sale, the cost of advertising to find a buyer, an auctioneer's fees if you sell that way, a surveyor's or valuer's fee, and the cost of any valuation you need in order to work the gain out. Out comes the £550 removals line you costed at the top of this page, along with storage, cleaning and anything you spent making the place look presentable. Mortgage interest and early repayment charges do not reduce the gain either.

One date worth knowing before you exchange. If there is tax to pay, it has its own return and a 60 day deadline that runs from completion, not from the day you shook hands. The full guide takes you through the rates, the allowance and the mechanics.