No completion, no fee conveyancing is a billing arrangement where your solicitor or licensed conveyancer waives their professional legal fee if your property transaction collapses before completion. Around one in four residential sales in England and Wales fall through before completion, and this model shifts the financial risk of that collapse from you to the law firm. You still owe third-party disbursements, but the solicitor’s own fee only becomes payable if the deal actually goes through.
How the Billing Model Works
Your quote splits into two parts: the legal fee and the disbursements. The legal fee covers the solicitor’s professional work: reviewing the title, drafting the contract, raising enquiries, and liaising with the other side’s lawyers. Under this arrangement, the entire legal fee is waived if the transaction fails for any reason before completion. The solicitor documents the agreement in the letter of engagement at the start of the matter.
If your buyer pulls out, the chain collapses, or your mortgage falls through, the firm writes off every hour spent on your file, regardless of how far the transaction had progressed. Firms absorb that risk across their whole caseload. Successful completions subsidise the ones that die before payment, which is why no completion no fee quotes tend to sit higher than traditional fixed-fee conveyancing. You pay a modest premium when things go smoothly in exchange for owing no legal fee when they don’t.
When the Guarantee Applies
The guarantee triggers whenever the transaction fails to reach legal completion. The most common cause is a broken chain. Property chains link multiple buyers and sellers, and if one party withdraws or loses financing, every connected deal can fall apart. You can do everything right and still lose months of work because someone three links away changed their mind.
Mortgage problems come next. If your lender withdraws the offer after a down-valuation or a change in your circumstances, the purchase cannot proceed and the legal fee is waived. The same applies when a survey reveals structural problems, contamination, or flood risk serious enough that you decide not to continue.
Gazumping and gazundering also sit inside the guarantee. Gazumping is when a seller accepts a higher offer from a different buyer after already accepting yours. Gazundering is the reverse: a buyer drops their offer at the last moment and the seller walks away. Either way, the deal dies before completion and the legal fee is waived.
Voluntary withdrawal is the area to check carefully. Most firms honour the guarantee if you decide to pull out, provided you do so before exchange of contracts, but this varies. Some agreements exclude voluntary withdrawal entirely, and some treat a withdrawal prompted by a bad survey differently from a change of heart. The letter of engagement should spell this out. If it doesn’t, ask before you instruct.
Why Exchange of Contracts Matters
The protection operates during the pre-exchange period, and that’s where you need it, because once contracts are exchanged both parties are legally bound and the transaction almost always completes. Exchange is the moment both sides sign identical contracts and the buyer’s solicitor sends the signed contract and deposit to the seller’s solicitor. Before that point, either party can walk away with no legal penalty. After it, pulling out carries severe consequences.
A buyer who defaults after exchange forfeits the deposit, typically 10% of the purchase price. On a £350,000 property, that’s £35,000 gone. The seller can also sue for additional losses: any shortfall if the property later sells for less, ongoing mortgage payments, storage costs, and extra solicitor fees. Completion itself usually follows exchange by one to four weeks, when the remaining money changes hands and the keys are released.
In practical terms, no completion no fee is really a “no exchange, no fee” promise. The vulnerable window is everything up to exchange, and that’s precisely the window the guarantee covers.
Disbursements You Still Pay
The “no fee” promise covers the solicitor’s professional charges only. Disbursements are payments your solicitor makes to third parties on your behalf, and you owe them whether the transaction completes or not. The firm has already paid these organisations out of its own account, so it cannot absorb the cost when a deal falls through.
Common disbursements include:
- Local authority searches, which check planning permissions, building control records, road schemes, and other restrictions. Costs vary by council but typically run between £250 and £450.
- Environmental and drainage searches from private data providers, usually bundled with other searches, covering flood risk, ground contamination, and drainage connections.
- Land Registry searches: an official copy of the register costs £7 online or £11 by post, with an official search with priority at the same rate. Several may be needed across a transaction.
- Anti-money laundering identity checks, around £6 to £20 per person.
- Bank transfer fees of £20 to £30 per telegraphic transfer.
- Leasehold management packs from the freeholder or managing agent, which can run £300 to £800 and make a failed leasehold transaction considerably more expensive than a failed freehold one.
Stamp Duty Land Tax and the Land Registry registration fee for transferring ownership are only payable on completion, so a collapsed deal doesn’t leave you owing either. An independent survey or homebuyer’s report is a separate contract with the surveyor and is non-refundable regardless of what happens to the conveyancing.
When a deal falls through, expect an invoice for all disbursements incurred up to that point. On a standard failed freehold purchase, total disbursement losses typically land between £300 and £600. Leasehold transactions can push that figure substantially higher.
Reading the Quote Before You Sign
Not all no completion no fee agreements look the same once you read them properly, and the cheapest headline figure is often the most expensive in practice. Some firms advertise a low base legal fee and then list supplementary charges for tasks most people would assume are included: dealing with a mortgage lender, acting on a leasehold, handling a gifted deposit, even making phone calls to the other side’s solicitor. Those add-ons can push the total above a straightforward fixed-fee quote elsewhere.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority requires residential conveyancing firms to publish clear pricing information, including the total cost or a realistic range, an explanation of what the price covers, a list of likely disbursements with estimated costs, and the qualifications of the people doing the work.1Solicitors Regulation Authority. SRA Transparency Rules A firm whose website is vague about what’s included is telling you something before you’ve even called them.
Three things to pin down before instructing. First, confirm whether the guarantee covers voluntary withdrawal, and if so, under what circumstances. Some firms treat a withdrawal triggered by a bad survey as the guarantee applying in full; others treat any withdrawal by the client as grounds to charge the legal fee anyway. Second, check when disbursements are payable. Some firms ask for money upfront to cover search costs; others pay first and invoice you later. Money paid on account at the start is typically at risk if the deal collapses, regardless of the no fee guarantee. Third, make sure the letter of engagement states in plain terms that the legal fee is waived if the transaction does not complete, and that it lists the circumstances where the guarantee does or does not apply. If the document is unclear, get it clarified in writing before you sign.