First-time buyer stamp duty relief: before and after April 2025
On 1 April 2025, the temporary Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) thresholds that had been in place since September 2022 reverted to their earlier levels. For first-time buyers the shift was quiet but wide-reaching: the price at which relief starts to taper fell, and the price at which the relief disappears altogether fell with it.
To measure the effect, Homecost took every English council area's 2025 median sale price and asked one question of each: on the typical home there, does a first-time buyer pay nothing, a partial bill, or the full rate? We ran that test twice — once against the temporary thresholds (0% band up to £425,000, relief withdrawn above £625,000) and once against the thresholds in force today (0% band up to £300,000, relief withdrawn above £500,000).
The number of English council areas where a first-time buyer paid £0 on the median home fell from 228 to 145 — out of 295 areas with enough recorded sales to measure. Put another way: before April 2025 roughly three in four council areas were stamp-duty-free for a first-time buyer at the typical local price; now it is closer to one in two.
What actually changed
Two first-time-buyer thresholds moved on 1 April 2025. A third — the standard 0% band that applies to home movers — fell from £250,000 to £125,000 at the same time.
| Threshold | To 31 March 2025 (temporary) | From 1 April 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| First-time buyer 0% band | £425,000 | £300,000 |
| Maximum price for any first-time buyer relief | £625,000 | £500,000 |
| Standard 0% band (home movers) | £250,000 | £125,000 |
First-time buyers' relief works in two steps. Up to the 0% band a first-time buyer pays nothing; between the 0% band and the cap they pay 5% only on the slice above the band; and above the cap the relief is withdrawn entirely, so they pay the same as any other buyer. Lowering both numbers therefore does two things at once — it pulls more buyers into a partial bill, and it pushes more buyers over the cliff where relief vanishes. Our guide to how first-time buyers' relief tapers between £300,000 and £500,000 walks through the mechanics step by step.
The same home, two bills
Because the bands moved but the 5% taper rate did not, the effect at any given price is straightforward to state. The figures below are for a first-time buyer purchasing their only home in England (current-year figures verified against the Homecost stamp duty calculator; the earlier figures follow directly from the temporary thresholds).
| Purchase price | First-time buyer SDLT to 31 Mar 2025 | First-time buyer SDLT from 1 Apr 2025 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| £310,000 | £0 | £500 | +£500 |
| £400,000 | £0 | £5,000 | +£5,000 |
| £425,000 | £0 | £6,250 | +£6,250 |
| £500,000 | £3,750 | £10,000 | +£6,250 |
| £545,000 | £6,000 | £17,250 | +£11,250 |
The last row is the cliff. At £545,000 a first-time buyer was inside the relief band before April 2025 and paid a tapered £6,000; today £545,000 sits above the £500,000 cap, relief is withdrawn in full, and the bill is £17,250 — identical to what a home mover pays.
How the map redrew
Bucketing all 295 council areas by their 2025 median sale price:
| First-time buyer on the median home | To 31 Mar 2025 (£425k / £625k) | From 1 Apr 2025 (£300k / £500k) |
|---|---|---|
| Pays £0 | 228 (77%) | 145 (49%) |
| Pays a partial (tapered) bill | 58 (20%) | 118 (40%) |
| No relief — median over the cap | 9 (3%) | 32 (11%) |
106 of the 295 areas (36%) moved into a less favourable band. Of those, 83 flipped from "£0" to a partial bill, and 23 flipped from a partial bill to no relief at all. The number of areas where the typical home is priced clean out of relief more than tripled, from 9 to 32.
The £300,000–£425,000 flip zone
The 83 areas that lost their £0 status are precisely those with a 2025 median between £300,001 and £425,000 — largely southern and Midlands city and commuter markets. The new first-time-buyer bill on the median home ranges from token to material.
| Council area | 2025 median | New first-time buyer SDLT |
|---|---|---|
| Rugby | £301,500 | £75 |
| York | £304,000 | £200 |
| Stockport | £310,000 | £500 |
| Solihull | £330,000 | £1,500 |
| Bristol | £350,000 | £2,500 |
| Milton Keynes | £350,000 | £2,500 |
| Trafford | £370,000 | £3,500 |
| Bath and North East Somerset | £400,000 | £5,000 |
| Brighton and Hove | £415,000 | £5,750 |
| Croydon | £425,000 | £6,250 |
At the top of that list, a first-time buyer paying Croydon's £425,000 median now faces £6,250 where the bill would have been £0 a year earlier — the £425,000 median sits exactly on the old 0% band.
The £500,000 cliff
Twenty-three areas crossed the harder line: their median moved from inside the taper (relief still available up to £625,000) to above the new £500,000 cap, where first-time buyers get no relief at all and pay the standard rate.
| Council area | 2025 median |
|---|---|
| Tandridge | £505,000 |
| Bromley | £525,000 |
| Southwark | £535,000 |
| Windsor and Maidenhead | £545,000 |
| Kingston upon Thames | £550,000 |
| Barnet | £580,000 |
| St Albans | £620,000 |
Almost all of the 23 sit on the London fringe or among the capital's outer boroughs. Windsor and Maidenhead is the clean illustration: a 2025 median of £545,000 means a first-time buyer there now pays the full £17,250, whereas the temporary thresholds gave them a tapered £6,000. A further nine areas — prime central London plus a handful of the dearest commuter districts, from Wandsworth and Richmond upon Thames to Kensington and Chelsea — were already above the old £625,000 cap, so their first-time buyers saw no change on this measure: they had no relief to lose.
On a transaction-weighted view
Counting sales rather than council areas tells the same story from the buyer's side. Of the 720,619 recorded English sales in 2025:
- 50.5% completed at £300,000 or under — still £0 for a first-time buyer.
- A further 22.5% completed between £300,001 and £425,000 — the band where a first-time buyer paid £0 before April 2025 but now pays up to £6,250.
- 7.7% completed between £500,001 and £625,000 — the band where relief went from partial to nil.
So a little over a fifth of all purchases now sit in a price band that attracts a first-time-buyer charge which a year earlier would have been zero.
What did not change
145 council areas — just under half — remain £0 for a first-time buyer on the typical home, because their median is still at or below the new £300,000 band. These are concentrated in the North East, North West, Yorkshire and the West Midlands. The cheapest — Burnley (£135,000), Blackpool (£137,500) and Kingston upon Hull (£141,000) — sit far below even the reduced band, so the reversion made no practical difference to a first-time buyer buying the typical home there. For the current, post-reversion picture across every tier of English council, see our national first-time buyer relief ceiling analysis.
Context
The higher thresholds were introduced as a temporary measure in September 2022 and were legislated to end on 31 March 2025, after which the bands returned to their previous levels (HMRC). The reversion was not targeted at any region — it applied uniformly — but because it lowered fixed cash thresholds, its bite fell hardest where median prices already sat between the old and new bands: the £300,000–£425,000 corridor of southern and Midlands markets, and the £500,000–£625,000 corridor around London. For a plain-English summary of everything that moved on 1 April 2025, see what changed in stamp duty since April 2025; for the relief itself, see how first-time buyers' relief works.
First-time buyers' relief also carries detailed conditions beyond price — every purchaser must be a first-time buyer, the property must be the buyer's only or main residence, and shared-ownership and lease arrangements have their own rules. This article is general information, not advice. Speak to a qualified adviser or conveyancer before acting.
See the numbers for your area
Median prices vary street by street, and yours may sit either side of the £300,000 band. To see recent sale prices, council tax and the all-in monthly cost for any address, search a postcode on Homecost — for example Stockport (SK1 1AA), one of the areas whose median crossed the new band this year. You can also browse more market analysis.
Based on 720,619 HM Land Registry completed standard sales of houses and flats in England during the 2025 calendar year (295 council areas with 30 or more sales) and published HMRC stamp duty thresholds. Data compiled 19 July 2026.