Moving Up: What's Your Next Deposit?

How much equity will I actually have to put down?

Net equity is your home's sale value minus everything you owe and everything you'll pay to sell. That means your outstanding mortgage balance, your estate agent's fee, your conveyancing and legal costs, and, if it applies, any early repayment charge on your current deal. Add any cash savings you're putting in on top, and you get your total starting deposit for the next home.

Take the calculator's own default example: a £320,000 home with £180,000 still owed on the mortgage. On paper that looks like £140,000 of equity. But once you take off a 1.2% estate agent fee (£3,840) and £1,500 in legal costs, the net equity released drops to £134,660. With no extra cash added, that's your deposit for the next place.

So what for you: whatever figure you had in your head before running the numbers, treat the calculator's output as the real one: it's usually a few thousand pounds lower once selling costs are counted properly.

Why do estate agent fees and legal costs eat into the figure so much?

Estate agent fees in the UK typically run somewhere between 1% and 2% (plus VAT) of the sale price, depending on the agent, whether it's a sole or multi-agency instruction, and your region (Which?, 2025). On a £320,000 sale, even the lower end of that range is close to £4,000 before VAT: money that never touches your bank account because it's deducted at completion. Legal and conveyancing costs for a straightforward sale usually land somewhere in the £1,000–£2,000 bracket, though leasehold sales or anything with a chain complication can push that higher.

These costs come off the top of your sale proceeds automatically and can't be planned around later, which is exactly why the calculator deducts them before it shows you a deposit figure.

So what for you: get an actual quote from your estate agent and solicitor before you rely on this number for an offer: a 0.5 percentage point difference in agent fee on a £320,000 sale is worth around £1,600 either way.

Could an early repayment charge catch me out?

An early repayment charge (ERC) applies if you sell and redeem your mortgage before your current fixed or tracker deal ends, and it's one of the most commonly overlooked costs among people moving house. ERCs are typically charged as a percentage of the outstanding balance (often somewhere between 1% and 5%, tapering the closer you get to the end of the deal), and lenders vary in how they calculate it, so the only reliable figure is the one on your latest mortgage statement or your lender's online account.

On that same £180,000 balance, even a modest 2% ERC would be £3,600 straight off your net equity: enough to change what you can realistically offer on the next property. If you're planning to move before your current deal matures, checking your mortgage offer document (or calling your lender) for the exact ERC percentage and end date should happen before you start viewing houses, not after you've had an offer accepted.

So what for you: if your fixed rate still has more than a few months left to run, check the ERC figure first: it can easily be the difference between a comfortable deposit and a tight one.

Is this deposit figure my whole moving budget?

No, and this is where a lot of home movers come unstuck. The deposit figure this tool produces is your starting deposit: the cash you can put down on the next property. It does not include Stamp Duty Land Tax on the new purchase, which is payable on the whole property in England and Northern Ireland regardless of how long you've owned your last home, nor does it include a fresh set of buying costs on the way in: a new survey, new conveyancing fees, mortgage arrangement fees, and removals. Run your new purchase price through the Stamp Duty calculator before you get attached to a property, because that bill lands on top of everything else, not instead of it.

So what for you: budget for Stamp Duty and new buying costs as separate line items from day one, rather than assuming your deposit figure has to stretch to cover them too.

What this means for you

Once you have a realistic net equity figure, the next question is whether it actually gets you the mortgage you need on the property you want, and that depends on your income, your existing commitments and the lender's affordability rules, not just the size of your deposit. Most people who run these numbers end up finding their deposit is smaller and their Stamp Duty bill is bigger than they first assumed, which narrows the realistic price bracket for the next home.

If you're in this position, the maths points towards checking your affordability alongside your equity figure before you view a single property, using our affordability calculator to see what that deposit actually supports at current mortgage rates, and using our cost of ownership tracker to keep tabs on what the bigger home will cost you to run once you're in it.

So what for you: treat the deposit figure as your ceiling for negotiation, not your target, and confirm affordability before you fall for a property that's just out of reach.