Cost

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Conveyancing is one of the few areas of legal work where a reliable quote can usually be given before anything starts. What it takes is your contract, not a phone call about a property in general.

General information, not legal advice. This page sets out how the law generally applies. It does not take account of your circumstances, and you should get advice about your own situation before acting on it. The official sources this page is written from are listed on it; where they differ from anything here, they are the authority.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

No figures appear on this website. That is deliberate. What a conveyance costs depends on the property, on the contract and on what is attached to it, and a number published here would be a guess presented as a fact. The useful thing is a quote for your transaction, in writing, before any substantive work begins.

This page sets out what to send so a quote can be given, what a written quote should actually tell you, and what the law requires a practice to disclose about costs.

What to send

Almost every question about cost is answered from the contract. If you have one, send it; if you do not yet, the property address and the type of transaction is enough to start.

The contract for sale, in full, including the annexures at the back — or the property address if there is no contract yet
Whether you are buying or selling
The type of property: a house, a unit, a townhouse, vacant land or a lot off the plan
Whether the sale is by private treaty or auction, and the auction date if there is one
Whether you have already exchanged, and if so on what date
Your lender, and whether finance is pre-approved or formally approved
The full legal names of everyone who will be on the title
Whether you are buying and selling at the same time

Keep the first message short and do not send a bundle of documents before a conflict check has been done. The contract and a few lines are enough. How it works explains why that check comes first.

What a written quote should tell you

Ask for these four things, from whoever you get a quote from. A quote that gives you a single number and nothing else is not telling you enough to compare it with anything.

The distinction between professional fees and disbursements is the one that matters most. Professional fees are somebody’s time. Disbursements are amounts paid out on your behalf — searches, certificates, the electronic settlement fee — and transfer duty is a liability to Revenue NSW that is larger than both. A quote that presents all of that as one figure makes it impossible to tell what you are being charged for.

The professional fee, and whether it is fixed or calculated some other way.
The expected disbursements, identified separately and described, not bundled into the fee.
What would change the fee, and in what circumstances. A complicated title, a difficult vendor or a purchase that falls over and restarts are the usual causes.
What is not included, so you know what you will still have to pay for elsewhere.

Transfer duty is not a legal fee and should never appear inside one. It is assessed by Revenue NSW on the value of the property. Our duty and exemptions page explains where to check the current rates and whether a first home buyer concession may be open to you.

What the law requires about costs

Under the Legal Profession Uniform Law a law practice must tell you in writing, at the outset, how its legal costs will be calculated and what it estimates the total will be. The disclosure has to set out your rights as well.

A costs agreement is a separate document from the disclosure. You do not have to sign one the day it is put in front of you, and you are entitled to negotiate the billing method.

You are also entitled to receive a bill, to ask for it to be itemised, and to be told if the estimate changes significantly as the matter develops. If a bill arrives that you do not understand, ask for it to be explained before you pay it.

To have costs disclosed to you in writing before substantive work starts
To negotiate the costs agreement and the billing method
To receive a bill and to ask for it to be itemised
To be told if the estimate changes significantly
To dispute a bill, including through the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner

A costs dispute runs on a much shorter time limit than a complaint about service. If a bill is the problem, raise it straight away rather than after the matter finishes — our complaints page sets out both paths.

Why there is no price list on this site

A published price would have to be either so broad that it tells you nothing, or specific enough to be wrong for most readers. Conveyancing looks uniform from the outside and is not: a straightforward purchase of a house on Torrens title and a purchase of an off-the-plan strata lot with a disclosure statement, a sunset date and a developer’s notice are different pieces of work.

The same reasoning applies to everything else numeric on this site. No duty rate, no first home buyer threshold, no cooling-off period in days and no percentage forfeited on rescission appears anywhere here. All of those are set outside this website and changed from time to time, and a stale figure on a page that somebody relies on does real harm.

Where a number matters, we link to the body that publishes the current one. Revenue NSW for duty and the first home buyer schemes, and the NSW Government’s own property pages for the cooling-off period.

Comparing quotes

If you are getting more than one quote, compare like with like. Check whether each one separates professional fees from disbursements, whether each includes the same work, and whether either excludes something the other covers.

Check who will actually do the work and whether they are a solicitor or a licensed conveyancer. Both may carry out conveyancing in New South Wales. A licensed conveyancer’s work is confined to the transaction; a lawyer can also advise where something sits outside it. About explains the difference and how to check a practising certificate.

And weigh the fee against what is at stake. Conveyancing fees are a small fraction of the price of a property, and the cheapest quote is a false economy if the contract is read quickly.

Send the contract

Use the form on the contact page, or the telephone number and email address below. If there is an auction date or a cooling-off period running, put that at the top of your message.

Enquiries

Through the form on our contact page.

Phone

(02) 8806 0866

[email protected]

What to attach

The contract for sale in full, or the property address if there is no contract yet.

Transfer duty

Duty is assessed by Revenue NSW and is separate from any legal fee. Use the calculator on the Revenue NSW transfer duty page for an indication.