It is not just the price differential you have to bear in mind when you move. Jeremy Gates looks at how you need to budget for fees and taxes too.

Tens of thousands of homeowners face five-figure bills – largely to pay all the taxes and fees required by Government and local authorities – when they move to a bigger home, says the annual Woolwich survey on the Costs of Moving.

Moving from a semi-detached to a detached home in England and Wales now costs an average £12,535 – compared with £4,535 in 2000. That’s a 176 per cent increase in moving costs against a rise of 70 per cent in property prices in the same period.

And the huge differential in values means buyers in more expensive areas are hit with much heavier moving charges, says Woolwich, the mortgage arm of Barclays Bank.

For example, the move from terraced to semi-detached house costs an average £16,659 in Greater London, £5,812 in southwest England, £6,542 in south-east – against £3,427 in the north, £3,826 in Yorkshire/Humberside, £3,917 in the north-west, £3,846 in Wales, £4,416 in the East Midlands and £4,833 in East Anglia.

Nationally, the move from an average terraced home (£149,906) to a semi (£174,744) costs an average £5,304. That’s 59 per cent up on the £3,333 figure in 2000.

However, the real victims of soaring rises in moving costs – caused largely by Chancellor Gordon Brown’s decision to ramp up stamp duty charges on the better off – are buyers at £300,000- plus, who usually want a detached home.

At £300,000, buyers pay legal fees of £652; Stamp Duty £9,000; Land Registry £220 and Search Fees £207, a grand total of £10,079.

The bill in Greater London for movers from semi to detached home in 2006 is a staggering £29,611; in the south-east £15,580 and in south-west England £13,889.

There’s a huge gulf at this price level: buyers in the West Midlands face taxes and charges totalling an average £11,238, against a total of only £5,421 in the East Midlands.

These fearsome bills for better-off homebuyers are largely the result, says Woolwich, of three per cent Stamp Duty cutting in at £250,000.

Says Woolwich head of mortgages Andy Gray: “It’s at the top end of the market that people get unsettled by headline numbers like £25,000 to move up from a semi to a detached home.

“At these levels, people think seriously about extending or converting a basement or loft which can be more cost effective than moving.”

On average, moving from semi to a detached home costs £15,580 in south-east England – against £5,101 in Wales. Wales is among a minority of regions where moving costs have risen more slowly than house prices.

In its latest analysis of Stamp Duty, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) says it now rakes in an astonishing £5.5 billion a year for the Chancellor – eight times more than the figure in 1997 when he came to power.

In 2004/5, Londoners paid £1.3 billion in Stamp Duty – against only £165 million in 1997.