“The UK’s top conveyancer for customer service.” Phil Spencer, on Montpellier Legal
Founded 2021 by Simon Thomas, a serial conveyancing founder with four firms in twenty years behind him. Today the firm is 5 years old, 100+ strong across 11 offices, an ESTAS 2025 Best Conveyancers winner and a certified B Corporation. We do residential conveyancing. We do not do anything else, and the collective experience of every fee-earner on the desk is in that one craft.
Best Conveyancers, UK
Top UK conveyancer for customer service
Over 2,000 people moved home through us
£25m valuation, 2024. Patient capital, no fixed exit.
Most law firms add wills, family, commercial, probate and four other practice areas to their conveyancing line. We do not. Every fee-earner on the desk works on residential property, every day. It is what produces the speed.
Listing-to-completion handling for houses and flats. ID and AML, draft contract pack, replies to enquiries, Stamp Duty filing, completion-day funds and Land Registry filing all in-house. Indicative fee from £1,795 plus VAT and disbursements; on a £335,000 freehold sale the all-in figure quoted in the open is £2,143.90.
Quote-to-keys handling. Searches, mortgage offer review, replies to enquiries, exchange, completion and Land Registry update. Indicative fee from £1,895 plus VAT and disbursements; on a £790,000 leasehold purchase the published all-in figure including third-party leasehold pack costs is £3,742.68.
Handled by a dedicated remortgage team under Hannah Thorpe, Associate and Head of Remortgage. Discharge of the existing charge, redemption, Land Registry update, source of funds and AML, all turned around inside the lender’s offer window. Fixed fee published on the Fees page.
Surcharge structure published in the open: new-build add £950, Help to Buy ISA add £150 per person, Shared Ownership add £950, gift or loan add £150 per giftor. Leasehold third-party costs itemised: Notice of Transfer about £150, Licence to Assign about £400, Deed of Covenant about £250, Certificate of Compliance about £200, all plus VAT.
Simon had founded four law firms in the twenty years before, sold two to national institutions, sat on the Law Society’s Conveyancing and Land Law Committee at Chancery Lane, and once turned a £20 million Knightsbridge purchase around in under one week. He built Montpellier Legal on the bet that a firm doing residential conveyancing and nothing else, with fixed itemised fees, transparent disbursements, and a real person building every estimate, could compete on speed and service against firms half a century older.
5 years in, we are eleven offices across the South-West and London, an ESTAS 2025 winner, a certified B Corporation, and the conveyancer Phil Spencer named UK number one for customer service. Foresight Group took a majority stake in 2024 at a £25 million valuation, structured as patient capital with no fixed exit. The Cheltenham office is still the founding desk, and Henrietta Street is still the address on every Companies House filing.
“This allows us to manage our growth at the pace we want rather than an artificial pace set by private equity.” Simon Thomas, on the Foresight investment (Legal Futures, 2024)
Founded four law firms in twenty years, two sold to national institutions. Former member of the Law Society’s Conveyancing and Land Law Committee at Chancery Lane. Completed a £20 million Knightsbridge purchase in under one week. Sunday Times Ask the Experts property solicitor.
Senior Associate. Runs the founding desk at The Brewery Quarter. Day-to-day Cheltenham conveyancing files route through Becky’s team.
Chief Risk and Operations Officer. Embeds the responsible and ethical practices at the core of the firm’s B Corp certification, named in client reviews for navigating chains to exchange.
The six-step estimate form walks you through transaction type, property type, sale and purchase prices, address, mortgage, new-build or Shared Ownership status, and how you heard about us. Those answers do not feed into a comparison-site spreadsheet. They land on the desk of an experienced fee-earner who builds the indicative quote by hand, with itemised legal fee, VAT at 20%, Stamp Duty Land Tax computed against your specific purchase price, conveyancing search bundle quoted in the £380 to £500 range, HM Land Registry fee from the Land Registry table, bankruptcy £7, priority £7 and bank transfer fee £35.
ID and AML are bundled into the fixed fee, not charged as a £30 add-on at week three. New-build, Help to Buy ISA, Shared Ownership and gift or loan surcharges are published on the Fees page so you know the all-in number on day one. The price on the engagement letter is the price on the completion statement.
The two stages that historically stall a chain are search return and replies to enquiries. Both sit on the case-management dashboard and are chased daily. Phil Spencer’s endorsement is for speed; the ESTAS 2025 Best Conveyancers category is for the same.
Fixed fee confirmed in writing on day one. ID and source-of-funds verification bundled into the fee.
Local authority, drainage, environmental and chancel searches placed within 48 hours. Seller’s contract pack reviewed line by line.
Replies to enquiries chased daily. Mortgage offer reviewed against the title and the searches the same week it lands.
Deposit funds released. Completion date agreed across the chain. Insurance instructed to start at exchange.
Completion funds remitted before midday. Keys released by the estate agent the same morning. Stamp Duty Land Tax filed within the statutory window. Land Registry update lodged.
Every estimate is built by a member of the team, not auto-generated from a spreadsheet. You get an itemised legal fee with VAT, Stamp Duty Land Tax computed against your specific price, conveyancing searches, HM Land Registry fee, bankruptcy and priority search fees, and the bank transfer fee. The number on the estimate is the number on the engagement letter.
Unit 13a, The Brewery Quarter
Henrietta Street
Cheltenham GL50 4FA
Phone · 01242 472200
Email · cheltenham@montpellier.legal
Quote · quotes@montpellier.legal
Park · The Brewery Quarter on-site car park, five minutes’ walk from the Promenade and Pittville Park
Out of hours, the quote form at the top of this page is the fastest way to start a file. We will route it to the Cheltenham desk the next working morning.
You pick one office as the lead, then the file is handled as a single piece of work across the firm. Eleven offices share one set of systems, one set of supervising solicitors and one set of fixed fees, so a buyer registered with Cheltenham and selling through Kensington still moves on one chain, with one ledger, in one set of correspondence.
The fixed fee is built by a human conveyancer, not an auto-generated PDF, after the six-step quote form has captured the transaction type, sale price, purchase price, mortgage requirement and any new-build or Shared Ownership or Help to Buy element. The number you see on the engagement letter is the number on the completion statement. Disbursements (Stamp Duty Land Tax, Land Registry fee, searches, bank transfer fee) are itemised separately and quoted at cost.
A named conveyancer leads the file and is the single contact you speak to. Behind them sits a supervising solicitor, a dedicated remortgage team under Hannah Thorpe, a leasehold pack team and a dedicated completion-day funds desk. You have one name on the email. The work has a team behind it.
Indicative fee from £1,895 plus VAT, plus a Stamp Duty Land Tax bill computed on the £400,000 figure (£7,500 at the current main residential rates, or zero for a qualifying first-time buyer), plus the standard conveyancing search bundle (£380 to £500), plus HM Land Registry fee per the Land Registry table (£135 to £270 at this price band), plus bankruptcy £7 and priority £7 and bank transfer fee £35. ID and AML are bundled into the firm’s fixed fee, not charged on top. Final figure is built into the engagement letter on day one.
Exchange to completion is usually one to two weeks unless a specific completion date is set further out by the chain. The two stages that historically slowed things down (search return and replies to enquiries) are tracked on the firm’s case-management dashboard and chased daily. Phil Spencer’s endorsement is for customer service speed; the ESTAS Awards 2025 Best Conveyancers category recognises the same.