First-time buyer stamp duty across England's shire districts in 2026
Since 1 April 2025, a first-time buyer in England pays no Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) on a home costing up to £300,000, provided it is their only property and nobody buying it has owned a home before (HMRC, 2026). Between £300,001 and £500,000 the relief tapers — 5% is charged only on the slice above £300,000 — and once the price passes £500,000 the relief is withdrawn in full, putting the buyer back on standard home-mover rates. The rules are set out in HMRC's first-time buyer stamp-duty relief guidance.
Whether that £300,000 line clears the typical home is almost entirely a question of geography. To map it, we took every 2025 sale of a house or flat recorded by HM Land Registry across England's 164 shire districts — the lower tier of the two-tier county councils, from Burnley to Elmbridge — and found the median sale price in each. That is 280,507 transactions in all (figures fetched 15 July 2026).
The result is a tier that sits squarely on the taper. In 74 of the 164 districts (45%) the median home is at or below £300,000, so an eligible first-time buyer at the local median pays nothing. In another 81 (49%) — the single largest group — the median lands inside the £300,000–£500,000 taper, where relief is real but partial. In just nine (5%) the median is above £500,000, and relief has run out altogether. Across the whole set the median-of-medians is £320,000 and the spread runs 4.8-fold, from Burnley's £135,000 to Elmbridge's £653,650.
That is a different picture from the neighbouring tiers. In England's unitary authorities, 60% of medians clear the £300,000 line; in the metropolitan boroughs the share is higher still. Shire districts, which include much of the commuter South East, are where the taper does most of its work.
Where first-time buyers still pay nothing
The cheapest shire districts are clustered in Pennine Lancashire and the former East Midlands coalfield. Burnley recorded the lowest 2025 median of all 164 at £135,000, where a first-time buyer pays £0 against £200 for a home mover. In every district below, the typical home falls under the £300,000 nil-rate.
| District | 2025 median | Sales | First-time buyer SDLT | Band D 2026–27 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burnley | £135,000 | 1,308 | £0 | £2,549.42 |
| Hyndburn | £140,000 | 1,126 | £0 | £2,465.98 |
| Pendle | £147,750 | 1,399 | £0 | £2,640.18 |
| Bolsover | £183,000 | 1,263 | £0 | £2,559.41 |
| Preston | £190,000 | 1,974 | £0 | £2,575.74 |
| Rossendale | £190,000 | 1,113 | £0 | £2,519.97 |
| Lincoln | £190,000 | 1,231 | £0 | £2,323.08 |
| Mansfield | £190,000 | 1,484 | £0 | £2,600.38 |
| Ashfield | £198,000 | 1,812 | £0 | £2,608.76 |
| Chesterfield | £200,000 | 1,462 | £0 | £2,339.49 |
A first-time buyer clears the nil-rate on the median home in 74 districts in total. Because the relief only removes tax the buyer would otherwise pay on the first £300,000, a home mover in the same district still faces a small bill — £200 in Burnley, £1,300 on a £190,000 home — which is exactly the gap the relief closes for an eligible first-time buyer.
The taper band: where most shire districts sit
Just under half of all shire districts fall in the £300,000–£500,000 taper — the largest of the three groups. Here relief still applies, but only up to the first £300,000, with 5% charged on the rest. A useful way to read it: the relief is worth a flat £5,000 right across the taper (the value of the £300,000 nil-rate band), so its cash value never changes even as the total bill climbs. You can follow how the £300,000–£500,000 taper works step by step.
In the typical shire district — a £320,000 median — an eligible first-time buyer pays about £1,000, against £6,000 for a home mover. At £400,000 the figures are £5,000 and £10,000; the £5,000 relief is unchanged, but as a share of the bill it has shrunk. The table below spans the band, from just over the nil-rate to the £500,000 ceiling.
| District | 2025 median | First-time buyer SDLT | Home-mover SDLT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheltenham | £325,000 | £1,250 | £6,250 |
| Canterbury | £345,500 | £2,275 | £7,275 |
| Warwick | £359,750 | £2,987 | £7,987 |
| Vale of White Horse | £400,000 | £5,000 | £10,000 |
| Cotswold | £441,250 | £7,062 | £12,062 |
| Oxford | £450,000 | £7,500 | £12,500 |
| Sevenoaks | £490,000 | £9,500 | £14,500 |
| Guildford | £500,000 | £10,000 | £15,000 |
Guildford's median sits exactly on £500,000, the last point at which relief still applies: an eligible first-time buyer there pays £10,000. One pound higher, and the picture changes sharply.
The £500,000 cliff: a ring around London
In nine shire districts the median home is above £500,000, and first-time buyer relief is gone entirely — the buyer pays full home-mover rates. All nine sit in the London commuter belt: five in Surrey, three in Hertfordshire and one in Essex.
| District | County | 2025 median | Sales | SDLT (any buyer) | Band D 2026–27 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tandridge | Surrey | £505,000 | 1,185 | £15,250 | £2,594.85 |
| Epping Forest | Essex | £515,000 | 1,827 | £15,750 | £2,277.21 |
| Three Rivers | Hertfordshire | £549,500 | 1,134 | £17,475 | £2,422.31 |
| Epsom and Ewell | Surrey | £550,000 | 1,045 | £17,500 | £2,530.84 |
| Waverley | Surrey | £555,000 | 1,912 | £17,750 | £2,604.87 |
| Hertsmere | Hertfordshire | £560,000 | 1,189 | £18,000 | £2,405.83 |
| Mole Valley | Surrey | £575,000 | 1,134 | £18,750 | £2,519.86 |
| St Albans | Hertfordshire | £620,000 | 2,091 | £21,000 | £2,419.22 |
| Elmbridge | Surrey | £653,650 | 2,090 | £22,682 | £2,557.75 |
The withdrawal is a genuine cliff, not a taper. A first-time buyer paying exactly £500,000 owes £10,000; at £505,000 — Tandridge's median — the bill is £15,250, because the whole £5,000 of relief disappears the moment the price tips over the line. In practice the first-time buyer and the home mover pay the same once relief is lost, so above £500,000 the relief stops mattering at all. Homecost's £500,000 stamp-duty cliff explainer walks through the threshold in detail.
Elmbridge — which takes in Esher, Cobham and Weybridge — recorded the dearest median of any shire district at £653,650, where any buyer pays £22,682 in SDLT.
Cheap to buy is not always cheap to run
Purchase price and running cost pull in different directions. Council tax is set locally, and the Band D charge — the standard national benchmark, though a home's actual bill depends on its A-to-H valuation band — bears little relation to house prices at district level.
Burnley, the cheapest district to buy at £135,000, carries a 2026–27 Band D of £2,549.42, comfortably above the shire-district average of about £2,453. Elmbridge, the dearest to buy at nearly five times the price, has a Band D of £2,557.75 — barely £8 a year higher. The lowest shire-district Band D belongs to Basingstoke and Deane (£2,255.21) and the highest to Lewes in East Sussex (£2,756.17), and neither is among the cheapest or dearest places to buy. A fuller picture sits in Homecost's guide to England's cheapest and most expensive council tax.
For a rough sense of the monthly commitment behind the headline price: on the £320,000 typical shire-district median, a 25% deposit leaves a £240,000 mortgage, which at the Bank of England's average 75% loan-to-value five-year fixed rate of 4.32% (April 2026) over 25 years works out at roughly £1,310 a month. Your own rate will depend on your lender, deposit and credit profile.
What it means
England's shire districts are the tier where the £300,000 nil-rate and the £500,000 cliff both bite hardest: nearly half of all districts sit in the taper, and the small group where relief vanishes entirely is a tight ring of Surrey, Hertfordshire and Essex commuter authorities. Where a buyer falls on that map is fixed by the local median, not by anything they can control — which is why the same £300,000 line can mean zero tax in Lancashire and a five-figure bill an hour down the line from London.
The figures here are medians of actual 2025 sales, drawn from more than 280,000 Land Registry transactions across 164 districts; SDLT is calculated on current thresholds and council tax on 2026–27 Band D charges. They describe what buyers have paid and what the rules currently charge — not what any individual home is worth, and not where prices go next. This is general information, not advice; speak to a qualified adviser or conveyancer before acting.
To see the true monthly cost — mortgage, council tax, energy and stamp duty — on a specific street, try a postcode such as Cobham in Elmbridge (KT11), or run your own figure through the stamp-duty calculator. More local cost breakdowns are in the regional prices section, and the full data behind Homecost sets out the sources.