Guide
Lease renewal fees: solicitor and surveyor are two separate bills
Updated
Budgeting for a renewal on the solicitor's quote alone understates it. The rent, which is the number the whole exercise turns on, comes from somebody else.
Who does what
- The solicitor
- Establishes whether the tenancy is protected, advises on and serves or responds to notices, negotiates the terms of the new lease, issues or defends proceedings where needed, and completes and registers the new lease.
- The surveyor
- Advises on the open market rent for the new tenancy, assembles and tests comparable evidence, negotiates the rent with the other side's surveyor, and where necessary gives expert evidence on it.
- Counsel
- Instructed on opposed renewals and on points of difficulty. An additional cost to the solicitor's fee, not part of it.
- The court, or a PACT appointee
- Court fees on any application, or the fees of the arbitrator or independent expert if the parties refer the rent or the terms to PACT instead.
How the fees are usually structured
Legal work on renewals is commonly charged hourly, because how far a renewal runs is genuinely unpredictable at the outset. Many firms will nonetheless give a fixed fee for defined stages: reviewing the lease and reporting on security of tenure, drafting and serving a notice, or issuing protective proceedings. That structure is worth asking for, because it converts an open ended engagement into a series of decisions you control. Surveyors quote for the valuation and negotiation as a separate instruction, and their fee for giving expert evidence is separate again.
Making quotes comparable
- State the same facts to every firm: protected or contracted out, what has been served, whether the renewal is opposed, and where the rent has got to.
- Ask for stage fees rather than a single number, with the trigger for moving to the next stage identified.
- Ask specifically whether protective proceedings and any court fee are inside or outside the quote.
- Ask what the firm charges if the matter becomes opposed, so the step change is visible before it happens rather than after.
- Get the surveyor's fee separately, and ask whether it covers negotiation with the other side's surveyor or only the initial advice.
The thing worth spending money on early
On almost every renewal the highest value early spend is establishing the position accurately: whether the tenancy is protected, what the dates are, and what the rent is likely to be. Those three answers determine strategy, and strategy determines cost. Renewals become expensive when they are conducted reactively against deadlines, and the difference is set months before any dispute arises.
No body sets solicitors' or surveyors' fees for renewal work and there is no published scale, so this page describes what drives the fee rather than quoting one. Obtain written quotes for your own renewal, and see the stage by stage breakdown for what each part of the process involves.