A buyer of a second home or buy-to-let in Hull needs roughly £43,360 in cash to complete on the city's 2025 median sale price — nearly three times the £14,760 a home mover needs for the same house. In Kensington & Chelsea, the gap is much narrower: an additional-property buyer needs £421,150 against a mover's £182,700, a multiple of 2.3 rather than 2.9. The extra-cash gap a second-home or buy-to-let buyer faces actually shrinks as prices rise, not widens — the opposite of what the headline stamp duty numbers suggest.
The three numbers that make up the bill
Buying an additional property — a second home, a holiday let or a buy-to-let — costs more up front than a main-residence purchase in three ways:
- A bigger deposit. Most buy-to-let and second-home mortgage products cap lending at 75% loan-to-value, so this piece uses a 25% deposit throughout, against the 10% used for home movers in Homecost's city-by-city cash-to-completion guide. Actual deposit requirements vary by lender and property.
- The 5% additional-dwelling surcharge. Since 31 October 2024, any purchase of an additional residential property in England or Northern Ireland over £40,000 carries a flat 5% Stamp Duty Land Tax surcharge on the whole price, stacked on top of the standard SDLT bands (HMRC, 2026). There is no nil-rate band, no taper and no first-time buyer relief on an additional property.
- HM Land Registry's registration fee. The same fixed scale applies regardless of why the property is being bought: £100 up to £200,000, £150 up to £500,000, £295 up to £1m, and £500 above that for an electronically lodged, whole-title freehold transfer.
Legal fees and searches sit on top of all three and typically add another £1,500–£2,000, varying by firm and whether the property is leasehold.
Cash to completion, 16 UK cities, 2026
The table below applies a 25% deposit and the 5% additional-property surcharge to each city's 2025 median sale price (HM Land Registry, category-A sales of houses and flats).
| City | 2025 median | Deposit (25%) | SDLT surcharge | LR fee | Cash to completion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hull | £143,000 | £35,750 | £7,510 | £100 | £43,360 |
| Sunderland | £160,000 | £40,000 | £8,700 | £100 | £48,800 |
| Liverpool | £182,000 | £45,500 | £10,240 | £100 | £55,840 |
| Bradford | £187,348 | £46,837 | £10,614 | £100 | £57,551 |
| Nottingham | £200,000 | £50,000 | £11,500 | £100 | £61,600 |
| Newcastle | £209,075 | £52,269 | £12,135 | £150 | £64,554 |
| Birmingham | £239,000 | £59,750 | £14,230 | £150 | £74,130 |
| Leicester | £242,000 | £60,500 | £14,440 | £150 | £75,090 |
| Leeds | £250,000 | £62,500 | £15,000 | £150 | £77,650 |
| Manchester | £253,000 | £63,250 | £15,300 | £150 | £78,700 |
| Portsmouth | £258,500 | £64,625 | £15,850 | £150 | £80,625 |
| Southampton | £260,000 | £65,000 | £16,000 | £150 | £81,150 |
| Bristol | £350,000 | £87,500 | £25,000 | £150 | £112,650 |
| Brighton & Hove | £412,100 | £103,025 | £31,210 | £150 | £134,385 |
| Newham (London) | £452,000 | £113,000 | £35,200 | £150 | £148,350 |
| Kensington & Chelsea (London) | £1,192,250 | £298,062 | £122,588 | £500 | £421,150 |
Figures as at 4 November 2026. SDLT calculated via Homecost's stamp duty calculator with the additional-property surcharge applied; Land Registry fee from the published Scale 1 (electronic lodgement).
The spread across the ladder is 9.7-fold on cash to completion (£421,150 against £43,360) — narrower than the 25%-deposit-only spread of 8.3-fold would suggest widening to, because the flat 5% surcharge scales with price in exactly the same proportion as the deposit does.
Why the multiple over a home mover narrows, not widens
Comparing this ladder to the home-mover figures in Homecost's cash-to-completion guide produces a counter-intuitive result. An additional-property buyer's cash-to-completion is roughly 2.9 times a mover's at the cheap end of the ladder, but only 2.3 times at the expensive end:
| City | Cash (second home/BTL) | Cash (mover, 10% deposit) | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hull | £43,360 | £14,760 | 2.94× |
| Manchester | £78,700 | £28,100 | 2.80× |
| Bristol | £112,650 | £42,650 | 2.64× |
| Kensington & Chelsea | £421,150 | £182,700 | 2.31× |
This is the mirror image of what drives the mover ladder's own wide 12.4-fold spread (see the companion guide): mover stamp duty is progressive, rising from a few hundred pounds at the cheap end to tens of thousands at the top as a buyer crosses more and higher-rate SDLT bands. The additional-property surcharge, by contrast, is a flat 5% of price at every point on the ladder — it never accelerates the way progressive tax bands do. So as prices rise, the mover's own stamp duty bill closes in, proportionally, on the second-home buyer's surcharge, and the overall cash gap between the two buyer types narrows rather than growing.
At Hull's £143,000 median, a mover pays just £360 in SDLT against the additional-property buyer's £7,510 — nearly 21 times more. At Kensington & Chelsea's £1,192,250 median, a mover's own bill (£62,975) has caught up to within a factor of 1.9 of the additional-property buyer's £122,588.
No first-time buyer relief applies
First-time buyer relief, which removes SDLT entirely on a main residence up to £300,000, has no equivalent for an additional property — the 5% surcharge applies in full regardless of whether it is a buyer's first, second or fifth property, and regardless of price, once the £40,000 floor is cleared (HMRC). A buyer purchasing an additional property below £125,000 is the only case where the standard SDLT band contributes nothing, leaving the bill as pure 5% surcharge.
What this doesn't cover
These are one-off cash sums needed to complete a purchase, not the ongoing cost of owning the property. Second-home and buy-to-let owners also face running costs this guide excludes: mortgage repayments at whatever rate their lender quotes, council tax (which some billing authorities now charge at up to double the standard rate on furnished second homes that are no one's main residence), and, for a let property, letting and management costs. Homecost's guide to the full cost of owning a second home walks through that ongoing stack in detail, and the additional-property surcharge explainer covers how the 5% rate itself is calculated. To see the cost picture for a specific address, try the Homecost tool on a real Liverpool postcode, or browse more buyer guides.
This is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. Actual costs depend on your lender, deposit, conveyancer and circumstances. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.