How Much Stamp Duty Will First-Time Buyers Pay?

Stamp duty is one of the biggest costs first-time buyers forget to budget for, largely because it doesn't show up anywhere on a property listing. The rules are also more nuanced than they first appear. First-time buyers get a meaningful relief, but only up to a point, and the exact figure depends on price, buyer type and which part of the UK the property is in.

Here's how it currently works, and where to get an exact figure for a specific property.

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1. What is stamp duty, and who pays it?

In England and Northern Ireland, the tax is called Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT), and it's paid by the buyer on most property purchases above a set threshold. It's collected by HMRC, and your solicitor or conveyancer typically handles the return and payment as part of completing the purchase.

Scotland and Wales use their own, separately administered taxes, covered further down.

2. How the standard rates work

For a buyer purchasing their only residential property, current SDLT rates in England and Northern Ireland are charged in bands, with each portion of the price taxed at its own rate:

Portion of the property price	Rate
Up to £125,000	0%
£125,001 to £250,000	2%
£250,001 to £925,000	5%
£925,001 to £1.5 million	10%
Above £1.5 million	12%

Only the portion of the price within each band is taxed at that band's rate, not the whole purchase price. HMRC's own SDLT calculator works through this band by band if you want to see the maths for a specific figure.

3. First-time buyer relief

Buyers purchasing their first home get a more generous set of bands, provided everyone buying together qualifies as a first-time buyer:

Portion of the property price	Rate
Up to £300,000	0%
£300,001 to £500,000	5%

If the price is over £500,000, this relief doesn't apply, and the purchase is taxed under the standard rates on the full amount instead.

BeforeYouBuy.house's built-in stamp duty estimator applies whichever rates match a specific price and buyer type automatically, so there's no manual band-by-band working out required.

4. If you already own a property

Buying an additional residential property, such as a second home or a buy-to-let, currently adds 5% on top of the standard rates across the whole price. Buyers who aren't UK resident for tax purposes may also pay a further 2% surcharge on top of whatever rate otherwise applies.

Neither of these is likely to affect a typical first-time buyer, but they're worth knowing about if a purchase involves more than one property, or a buyer based overseas.

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5. Scotland and Wales work differently

Scotland replaced stamp duty with its own Land and Buildings Transaction Tax, administered by Revenue Scotland, with its own thresholds and its own first-time buyer relief.

Wales uses Land Transaction Tax instead, administered by the Welsh Revenue Authority, again with separate bands from both England and Scotland. Both are structured similarly to SDLT in principle, but the actual thresholds differ, so a like-for-like comparison across borders isn't as simple as applying the same figures.

Your exact figure, and the wider picture

Rates and thresholds are set at the UK Budget and the equivalent Scottish and Welsh Budgets, and can change with little notice. Rather than working from a table that could be out of date by the time you use it, a BeforeYouBuy.house report includes:

A stamp duty estimate for the specific property

Calculated automatically from its price, location and buyer type.

A mortgage comparison

To see how different rates and terms affect the total cost of buying.

A future value forecast

So the tax on the way in sits alongside a sense of what the property could be worth further down the line. This is really the point of a BeforeYouBuy.house report: the financial planning tools sit in the same place as the property, price and environmental data, rather than requiring a separate calculator on a separate site.

This article is general information, not tax or financial advice, and rates can change. For guidance specific to a purchase, speak with a solicitor, conveyancer or financial adviser.

Before you buy, do your research

Stamp duty is easy to overlook when you're focused on the asking price and the viewing itself. It shouldn't be a surprise at completion.

How much would stamp duty add to this purchase? Does first-time buyer relief apply? How does that change the budget?

These are questions worth answering before you commit to one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make.

BeforeYouBuy.house brings the research together.

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