If you’re selling your house in Scotland, it’s important to factor in the costs involved when working out how much money you’ll be left with. There are a number of different costs to consider, including the price of a home report, marketing costs and conveyancing fees.
How much your property is worth is one factor that affects how much you’ll end up paying. This depends on where you live as well as the property itself.
There can be huge differences between property prices in different parts of Scotland. For example, the average price of a home in Edinburgh was £273,400 in August 2024, according to our latest house price index, while it was just £150,200 in Glasgow and £135,700 in Aberdeen.
According to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, the average price of a property in Scotland was £200,000 in August 2024.
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How much does selling a house cost in Scotland in 2024?
Below, we look at the main costs of selling a house in Scotland and how much you could pay, including VAT, if you were selling a property in Scotland at the average price of £200,000. If your property is worth less than this, it’s likely that your costs will be less too.
Home report costs
The first thing you have to pay for when selling your house is a home report, which must be given to prospective buyers to tell them what they need to know about your property. This has been a legal requirement in Scotland since 2008. It includes three documents:
Property questionnaire – filled in by you to provide information about a range of aspects of your home, such as any alterations you’ve made and the council tax band it’s in
Single survey – a detailed survey looking at the condition and value of your property carried out by a surveyor
Energy report – also known as an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). This looks at the energy efficiency of your home, its energy costs and how its efficiency can be improved
The cost can range from a few hundred to more than a thousand pounds, depending on the value of your home. The age and location of your property can also affect the price.
Cost: £420-£600
Read more about what’s involved in selling a house in Scotland.
Solicitor’s fees
You need a solicitor to handle the legal process of selling your home (conveyancing) but in Scotland a solicitor can also market your home for you, doubling as an estate agent. These firms are known as solicitor estate agents.
Like an estate agent, they take photos of your property and compile the necessary information. This could include a description, floor plan, and details of nearby schools and transport. They advertise it on websites like Zoopla and elsewhere and can put up a for sale board.
How much you pay depends on whether you’re using your solicitor to do the conveyancing only or whether they’re acting as your estate agent too, where you’ll pay one fee for both. The fee for estate agency could either be included as a fixed fee or a percentage of the sale price.
Cost: conveyancing and estate agency £4,000-£4,200; conveyancing only £1,025-£1,250
Estate agent fees
If you decide to use an estate agent as your selling agent rather than your solicitor, you usually pay a percentage of the sale price. This tends to be around 1.2% for sole agency but it could be more. There are also a growing number of fixed-fee agents.
You could pay upwards of 3% if you choose multi agency rather than sole agency. This means you market your property with more than one estate agent so they compete with each other to sell your home.
Agents charge a higher fee for multi agency as there’s a chance they’ll get nothing if one of the other agents secures the sale. However, as most properties are now advertised online there’s usually little benefit to multi agency.
Cost: £2,400
Removal costs
You may be able to hire a van and move your possessions yourself if you don’t have much. However, chances are that if you’re selling a house or flat you’ve lived in for a while, you’ll have accumulated a lot and will need a removal service to do it for you.
You can choose to pay for transportation only or add extra services, including packing, disassembling furniture, storage and cleaning.
According to moving services comparison site Compare My Move, the average cost of removals in Scotland without any extras is £896 in 2024 based on its user data. It costs less overall than in England and Wales, with the exception of the North East (£823) and North West (£816) regions of England.
Other factors that affect removal costs are the distance you’re moving, how easy it is to access your property, the size of your home and the volume of possessions you own.
Cost: £896
How does the cost of selling a house in Scotland compare?
You could pay between £4,741 and £5,696 to sell a house in Scotland at the average house price of £200,000.
Conveyancing fees and estate agency fees in Scotland are similar to in the rest of the UK. You’re likely to pay less for removals than in many other areas but, unlike elsewhere in the UK, you have to pay for a home report.
All sellers in the UK have to pay for an EPC but the cost of the survey is only the seller’s responsibility in Scotland. This makes up the majority of the cost of a home report.
However, as house prices tend to be lower in Scotland than in England and Wales, on average you’ll pay less to sell your house there.
Read our guide to the cost of selling a home for more information about how much you’ll pay in the rest of the UK.