Make Your Move Easy
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Make Your Move Easy
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Cardiff, South Glamorgan
Tell us what you are buying or selling in Cardiff and we will come back with a fixed quote from a regulated conveyancing firm — including the leasehold work that catches most Cardiff transactions out.
Which are you doing?
There is no single Cardiff price, and any firm quoting one before knowing the property is guessing. What a quote depends on is straightforward: whether you are buying, selling or both, the price of the property, whether it is freehold or leasehold, and whether there is a mortgage. Cardiff quotes tend to sit higher than the South Wales average for one reason — the proportion of leasehold flats, which carry genuinely more work.
Rather than publish a figure that goes stale, we run your details through the live quote engine and show you the actual fee. It is itemised, so you can see exactly which part is the solicitor's charge and which part is money passed straight through to a third party.
Quotes are valid as issued and there is no obligation to instruct. If the transaction turns out to be more complicated than described — an unregistered title, a missing lease, a deed of variation — you are told before any extra work is charged, not afterwards.
The legal work is genuinely different depending on which side you are on, and the quote reflects that. Here is what changes.
Your conveyancer investigates the title, orders and reviews the searches, raises enquiries with the seller's solicitor, checks the lease if there is one, and reports to you and your lender before you sign anything.
In Cardiff the enquiries that matter most are usually about the building rather than the paperwork: service charge history, the reserve fund, planned major works, and for taller Bay blocks whether the building has current fire safety documentation your lender will accept.
You complete the property information and fittings forms, your conveyancer draws the contract pack, answers the buyer's enquiries and redeems your mortgage on completion.
Selling a Cardiff leasehold flat has one step that determines the whole timeline: the management pack. It is ordered from the managing agent, it costs money, and it can take four to six weeks. Ordering it the day the offer is accepted is the single most useful thing a Cardiff seller can do.
Most moves are both, and the two files run alongside each other with one exchange and one completion date agreed across the chain.
Quoting both together is cheaper than two separate transactions, and it means one person holds the whole picture rather than two firms co-ordinating by email. Tell the quote engine you are doing both and it prices the pair.
Cardiff is the most leasehold-heavy market we work in, and leasehold is where transactions slow down. Knowing which you have before you quote avoids a surprise later.
You own the building and the land. The work is the title, searches, enquiries and the mortgage — the shortest and cheapest route. Most houses in Whitchurch, Llanishen, Rhiwbina and Pontprennau are freehold.
Contract pack, forms, enquiries and mortgage redemption. Where you have extended, converted a loft or replaced windows, the buyer's solicitor will ask for the building regulations completion certificate or FENSA paperwork. Find it before you are asked.
Everything a freehold purchase involves, plus reviewing the lease itself: length of term, ground rent and any escalation, service charge, restrictions on letting or pets, and who is responsible for the roof and structure. Your lender has its own minimum lease length, and a short lease can stop a mortgage outright.
You will need the management pack, up-to-date service charge accounts and confirmation of any outstanding major works. Buyers walk away from Cardiff flats over a Section 20 notice for major works that nobody mentioned until week ten.
Common in converted period houses in Roath, Canton and Pontcanna. You hold a lease and a share of the freehold company. It usually works well, but the company's records, accounts and insurance still need checking, and informal arrangements between owners frequently need documenting properly for a lender.
Leasehold genuinely costs more because it genuinely is more work. It is shown as a separate line in your quote rather than folded into the headline fee.
Cardiff prices have pulled away from the rest of South Wales, and a large share of first purchases here are flats — which means most first-time buyers meet leasehold on day one. The order of events is worth knowing before you start.
If you are buying with a gifted deposit, a Help to Buy equity loan or through shared ownership, say so at quote stage — each adds specific work and each is priced openly rather than added later.
Where there is a mortgage, your conveyancer acts for you and for the lender. That means the lender's own conditions have to be satisfied before completion — retentions, indemnity policies, confirmation of the source of your deposit — and those conditions are a common reason a completion date slips.
A cash purchase removes the lender entirely and can complete considerably faster, though the searches are still worth doing. Nobody wants to discover a planning enforcement notice after they own the house.
Chains move at the pace of their slowest link. Cardiff chains are often long because so many local moves are flat-to-house, and a leasehold flat sale sitting at the bottom of the chain will set the timetable for everyone above it. If you are selling a flat and buying a house, start the management pack immediately.
We handle purchases, sales and transfers of equity. Remortgage-only work is not part of the current conveyancing quote engine — if you need a remortgage, our mortgage advice service is the right starting point.
Six steps from quote to keys. You can see where your file is at any point from your MYME account.
We are not a law firm. We are a Newport-based property services platform, and the conveyancing is done by regulated firms on our panel. That is the honest description, and it is also the point.
We do not claim every panel firm has an office on Queen Street. Modern conveyancing is done by post, portal and phone, and what matters is that the firm is regulated, responsive and knows the Cardiff issues — leasehold, service charges and building safety — before they appear.
Cardiff Bay and the city centre are dominated by apartment blocks, and those transactions live or die on the management information. Service charges, ground rent, the reserve fund, planned major works and the managing agent's response time all sit outside your solicitor's control, which is why the pack is requested on day one rather than when the buyer asks.
For taller blocks, lenders now routinely ask questions about external wall systems and fire safety documentation. Where a building has current paperwork the transaction proceeds normally; where it does not, the lender may decline or delay. It is a question worth asking the seller before you offer, not after your searches are paid for.
Cathays, Roath and Grangetown are dense Victorian terraces, many converted into flats. A conversion done informally decades ago can have a lease that does not properly deal with the roof, the drains or the shared hallway — resolvable, but not in a week. Pontcanna and Canton period houses tend to be freehold, and there the recurring issue is paperwork for loft conversions, rear extensions and knocked-through walls.
Northern Cardiff — Llanishen, Lisvane, Rhiwbina, Whitchurch and Radyr — is mostly conventional freehold housing, and these are usually the most straightforward files. Some sit within former coal mining areas, so a mining search is ordered as a matter of course. New-build estates around Pontprennau and St Edeyrn's often come with estate rent charges and management company arrangements that a buyer should understand before exchange, because they continue long after completion.
Cardiff is also in Wales, which changes the tax. Land Transaction Tax has its own thresholds and its own return, and the figures you find on English stamp duty calculators do not apply. Your conveyancer calculates and submits it.
Conveyancing is handled across the whole city and the surrounding area, including:
We also handle conveyancing across Newport, Bristol and the wider South Wales area, so a move between any of them is one file rather than three.
Three guides worth ten minutes if this is your first transaction in a while.
A regulated firm, a fixed quote, and someone who answers the phone.