Conveyancing fees

Why two quotes are so hard to compare

Half of a conveyancing quote is a negotiable professional fee. The other half is government registry charges that are published, fixed, and identical no matter who you hire. Almost no quote shows you which is which, so the checker above prints the fixed half, verified from each registry’s own schedule.

Ask three firms for a conveyancing quote and you will get three numbers that are not measuring the same thing. One quotes the professional fee alone. One quotes a bundled figure with disbursements estimated inside it. One quotes low and lists disbursements as “at cost, to be advised”. None of them is necessarily wrong, but you cannot compare them until you separate the halves.

The government half is knowable. Every land registry publishes its lodgement fees, and they do not change based on who lodges the document. So the honest comparison is: take each quote, subtract the fixed registry charge shown above, and compare what is left. That remainder is the actual price of the service, and it is the only part anyone is competing on.

Registry lodgement fees at $800,000, every state

Transfer plus one mortgage registration, from each registry’s FY 2026-27 schedule. The spread is wider than most buyers expect, and it is a pure jurisdiction difference — the same work, the same document, a different charge.

You cannot deduct it, but you do not lose it either

A common assumption on an investment purchase is that the legals come off the rent at tax time. They do not. The ATO puts conveyancing costs squarely on its list of acquisition and disposal costs you cannot claim a deduction for, alongside the purchase price, stamp duty on the transfer and a buyer’s agent’s fee.

The money is not wasted, though — it moves rather than disappears. Those costs form part of the property’s cost base, so they reduce the capital gain whenever you sell. In the ATO’s own example a buyer’s $350 surveyor and $750 stamp duty turn a $170,000 purchase into a $171,100 cost base. Keep the invoices; they are worth something at the other end.

One place breaks that rule: in the ACT, where homes are held on Crown leases, the ATO treats the duty as a lease cost you can deduct in the year you buy. Whether stamp duty is tax deductible works out what the duty is worth in each state, and when.

If you are still deciding who to hire, what a conveyancer does sets out the job for a buyer and for a seller, and why Queensland, and on its legislation apparently the ACT, leave the work to lawyers.

What sits on top of both halves

Beyond the professional fee and the registry lodgement, expect title and plan searches, council and water certificates, and the electronic settlement charge. They vary by council and by how many searches your contract needs, which is why no calculator can pin them exactly — but a quote that omits them entirely is understating the total, not saving you money.

PEXA is the name you will see on that last line. In most states settlement is now done online: the money moves and the transfer is lodged in one electronic workspace, run by an approved operator. There are two, PEXA and Sympli, and electronic lodgement is compulsory for all land dealings in NSW. The operator’s fee is a private charge passed on to you, not a registry fee, so it is not in the government figures above. What a conveyancer does sets out where electronic settlement is compulsory in each state.

Stamp duty is separate again, and much larger than any of this. If you have not costed it yet, the stamp duty calculator for your state includes these same registry fees in its all-in figure.