Attorney fees when buying a house in South Africa: who charges what and who pays?

The buyer pays the transferring (conveyancing) attorney’s account, even though the seller is the one who appoints that attorney. It is the default structure baked into almost every South African sale: the seller’s agent or the seller nominates a conveyancing firm, the offer to purchase records that nomination, and the firm then acts in the transfer — with its fee, on the LSSA scale, charged to the buyer as part of the transfer costs.

This is the asymmetry almost no buyer expects: the professional handling the single biggest purchase of your life is chosen by the other party to the deal, and you carry the account. It is not improper — conveyancers act for the transfer itself, not for the seller personally — but it does mean the seller has no incentive to shop the fee on your behalf, and you should not assume the nominated firm was selected for value.

Your one lever sits in the offer to purchase. Before signing, you can ask that the transfer be handled by a conveyancer you nominate (or at least that the nomination clause be left open for consultation). Sellers agree more often than buyers expect, especially when you have your own attorney in mind; the offer to purchase guide covers the clauses worth reading before you sign.

When you finance the purchase, a second attorney registers the bond at the Deeds Office. The bank appoints that firm — almost always from its panel of conveyancers — and instructs it directly, but the account lands with you, because the bond agreement’s costs clause makes the borrower pay the costs of registering the bank’s security. The fee follows the same 2026 LSSA scale, but calculated on the loan amount rather than the purchase price.

You cannot freely shop this appointment the way you would a quote for other professional work — the bank’s panel system exists to keep its security documents consistent — but you are not entirely without influence. You may ask the bank to appoint a specific conveyancer from its panel, and banks vary in how readily they accommodate that. What you should always do is ask for the account upfront: the guideline scale gives you a firm, dated anchor (as at 9 September 2026) against which to read it.

The bond attorney’s fee is also the one most often capitalised: many banks will add bond registration costs to the loan amount rather than demanding them in cash, subject to your loan-to-value and affordability. That convenience costs interest over the life of the bond, so treat it as a financing choice, not a free pass — the paying-extra guide explains what carrying a slightly larger balance actually costs.

Conveyancing fees in South Africa are not an hourly rate and not a percentage of the price. They are a recommended tariff: a fixed fee for the first band of value, then a set amount per increment of value above that band, with any part of an increment counting as a full increment. On the 2026 guideline, the first R100 000 of value carries R6 875; from R100 001 to R500 000 you add R1 100 per R50 000 (or part); and the increments step up through the higher bands shown in the table above, up to R68 675 for the first R5 000 000 plus R5 340 per further R1 000 000 (all excluding VAT, effective 1 July 2026).

Two consequences follow. First, the fee grows in steps, not smoothly — crossing a bracket boundary adds a whole increment, which is why two nearly identical purchase prices can carry visibly different fees. Second, the same scale serves both registrations in the deal: the transfer attorney applies it to the purchase price, the bond attorney to the registered loan amount. Everything else being equal, a bigger deposit shrinks the bond attorney’s fee by shrinking the base it is calculated on.

For the transfer, the appointment is technically the seller’s — but the nomination is written into the offer to purchase, which means it is negotiable at exactly one moment: before you sign. Ask for your own nomination, or for the clause to be softened so the conveyancer is agreed between the parties. If the seller’s nomination stands, you can still ask the firm for its quote upfront and check it against the guideline scale before registration day.

For the bond registration, the appointment belongs to the bank, which instructs a panel conveyancer directly. Your realistic options are to request a specific panel firm and to read the account carefully when it arrives. What you should not expect is an open market: banks keep bond registrations in-panel to control the quality of their security documents, and no clause you sign with the seller can change that.

Either way, the scale is public, dated and uniform — which means the cheapest meaningful protection you have is simply knowing the 2026 numbers before the accounts arrive. The transfer and bond registration costs guide sets out the full cost stack around these two fees — transfer duty, Deeds Office fees, initiation costs and the rest — so nothing on the account surprises you.

Transfer fees pay for the conveyance itself: the deed of transfer that moves ownership from the seller to you, drafted and lodged by the transferring attorney. They exist in every sale, are calculated on the purchase price, and are payable by the buyer even though the seller appointed the attorney. If you buy cash, they are the only attorney fees in the deal.

Bond registration fees pay for a different deed entirely: the mortgage bond that registers the bank’s security over the property, drafted and lodged by the bond attorney appointed by your bank. They exist only if you finance, are calculated on the loan amount rather than the purchase price, and are also payable by the borrower. The two registrations usually move through the Deeds Office simultaneously, which is why buyers receive two attorney accounts for what feels like one transaction.