For most first-time buyers in England, the comparison this guide sets out to make doesn't apply — because one side of it is zero. Homecost's mover-focused version of this ladder found that stamp duty ranges from a few weeks' worth of council tax in the cheapest authorities to 36 years' worth in Kensington and Chelsea. Re-run the same ladder for first-time buyers, and the picture changes sharply at the cheap end: across most of the country, first-time buyer relief cancels the stamp-duty side of the sum entirely.
First-time buyers pay no Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) at all on a main residence up to £300,000. Relief then tapers — a flat 5% applies to the slice between £300,000 and £500,000 — before disappearing completely above £500,000, at which point a first-time buyer is taxed exactly as a home mover would be (HMRC, 2026). That structure means the "years of council tax to equal your stamp duty" question has three very different answers depending on where a buyer is looking.
Where the £300,000 threshold does all the work
We took the same dozen local authorities used in the mover comparison — a spread from Kensington and Chelsea to Blackpool — plus the England-wide median, and recalculated stamp duty for a first-time buyer on each 2025 median sale price (HM Land Registry price-paid data, category A residential sales, fetched 2 September 2026), using Homecost's stamp duty calculator. We then divided by the 2026-27 Band D council tax bill for that authority (gov.uk).
| Local authority | 2025 median price | First-time buyer SDLT | Band D (2026-27) | Council tax to equal SDLT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blackpool | £137,500 | £0 | £2,513.22 | 0 |
| Kingston upon Hull | £142,000 | £0 | £2,295.04 | 0 |
| County Durham | £145,000 | £0 | £2,622.15 | 0 |
| Middlesbrough | £156,000 | £0 | £2,549.16 | 0 |
| Hartlepool | £157,250 | £0 | £2,560.20 | 0 |
| Stockton-on-Tees | £177,000 | £0 | £2,589.83 | 0 |
| Darlington | £179,995 | £0 | £2,493.83 | 0 |
| England (national median) | £295,000 | £0 | £2,410.97 | 0 |
| Dorset | £345,000 | £2,250 | £2,765.02 | ~10 months |
| Windsor & Maidenhead | £545,000 | £17,250 | £1,952.62 | ~8.8 years |
| Wandsworth | £650,000 | £22,500 | £1,028.21 | ~21.9 years |
| Westminster | £875,000 | £33,750 | £1,049.55 | ~32.2 years |
| Kensington & Chelsea | £1,172,500 | £61,000 | £1,666.65 | ~36.6 years |
Figures rounded. Median prices from HM Land Registry price-paid data (category A, fetched 2 September 2026); Band D from gov.uk 2026-27 council tax rates; stamp duty calculated with first-time-buyer relief applied via Homecost's stamp duty calculator.
Eight of the thirteen rows — everywhere from Blackpool up to the England-wide median itself — come out at exactly zero. The national median transaction price, £295,000, sits inside the nil-rate band, so a first-time buyer purchasing at that price across the whole of England & Wales pays no SDLT at all. (Land Registry records don't tag which transactions involve a first-time buyer specifically, so this compares the FTB scale against the general market median — the true first-time-buyer median, skewed toward flats and terraces, would likely sit even lower.)
The cliff at £500,000
Dorset is the one authority in this table where relief applies but doesn't zero out the bill. At its £345,000 median, only the £45,000 above the £300,000 threshold is taxed, at 5% — £2,250, against a mover's £7,250 on the same price. That's still under ten months of Dorset's £2,765.02 Band D bill, a fraction of the roughly 2.6 years a home mover would take.
Above £500,000, the relief doesn't taper further — it stops. A first-time buyer purchasing at Windsor & Maidenhead's £545,000 median pays the same £17,250 a mover would, because relief is withdrawn entirely once the price passes the ceiling, not reduced pound for pound. The same is true further up the table: Wandsworth, Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea all show identical first-time-buyer and mover figures, because none of their medians sit anywhere near the relief band. Mapping which parts of England actually clear that £500,000 line shows the cliff is mostly a London and South East phenomenon — which is also why the years-to-equal ratio for a first-time buyer in the capital's more expensive boroughs converges with the mover figures already published.
Three things this doesn't capture
Band D is a benchmark, not the typical bill. Most homes sit in bands A to C, where the annual charge is lower than Band D — which would stretch the "months/years to equal" figure further for a typical lower-banded home. The table uses Band D throughout for a consistent comparison, not because it's the most common bill.
This is a general-market median, not a first-time-buyer one. Because Land Registry data doesn't identify buyer type, the medians above reflect all category-A sales in each authority, not first-time-buyer purchases specifically. First-time buyers typically buy smaller, cheaper properties than the market as a whole, so the zero-SDLT rows in this table are, if anything, a conservative estimate of how much of the market clears the threshold.
England only. Scotland (Land and Buildings Transaction Tax) and Wales (Land Transaction Tax) set their own thresholds and reliefs, so this ladder doesn't carry across the border. The full mechanics of how the £300,000-to-£500,000 taper works are set out separately.
Check your own numbers
You can see the full monthly cost — mortgage, council tax and stamp duty together — for any Hull postcode, one of the areas in this table where a first-time buyer's stamp duty comes to nothing. Run your own purchase price through the stamp duty calculator, or browse the rest of Homecost's buyer guides for more on how the different UK property taxes fit together.
This is general information, not advice. Stamp duty relief depends on your specific circumstances, including whether you and any joint buyer have owned property before, and council tax depends on your property's valuation band. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.