The property glossary
Every term you will meet buying or selling a UK home, explained in plain English: the jargon of estate agents, surveyors, mortgage brokers, lenders and conveyancers. 464 terms across nine chapters.
Last reviewed 24 July 2026.
Estate agent terms
Estate agency has a language of its own, and most of it was never designed with the seller in mind. Every term an agent, a listing or an agency contract will put in front of you, in plain English.
68 terms
Offers and negotiation
The stretch between an offer and a binding contract is where UK sales are won, lost and renegotiated. These are the terms that decide it.
31 terms
Mortgages and lending
Lenders and brokers speak in abbreviations, and the money at stake makes guessing expensive. Every mortgage term you will meet while buying, selling or remortgaging.
72 terms
Surveys and property condition
Survey reports are written in careful professional language that can make a loose gutter and a collapsing wall sound weirdly similar. These are the terms, and what they actually mean for the sale.
63 terms
Conveyancing: the process
Conveyancing is the legal work that turns an agreed sale into a completed one, and it runs on terms nobody explains until you are mid-transaction. Here is the whole process, term by term.
54 terms
Titles, planning and property law
What you legally own, what binds it, and what you may do with it. The terms of ownership and planning, including the Scottish system's own vocabulary.
64 terms
Leasehold and freehold
Leasehold has more jargon per square foot than any other corner of UK property, and reform is arriving in stages, which makes precision matter more, not less. Here is the whole vocabulary, as the law stands now.
45 terms
Money, tax and fees
The taxes and fees of moving home, and the difference between the ones everyone pays, the ones only some pay, and the ones nobody should pay twice.
32 terms
New build and auction
Two corners of the market with rulebooks of their own: buying a home that does not exist yet, and buying one in a room full of rivals. The vocabulary of both.
35 terms
Why this glossary exists
Property has a language problem: the people who use these terms every day forget that nobody else does. ValuQ gives UK homeowners free, side-by-side property valuations from competing local estate agents, and a seller who understands the language stays in control of the process. That is the whole point.
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