How much cash should you hold back after the deposit? A hidden-cost reserve by purchase price (UK 2026)
Buyers focus on the deposit. The deposit is the headline number — it is rarely the number that breaks a purchase. The break is usually a smaller line item that landed late: a survey upgrade, a higher arrangement fee, a stamp-duty bill that came in at the standard rate instead of the first-time-buyer rate.
This guide builds a practical "cash reserve" rule-of-thumb above the deposit, banded by purchase price. Every figure is sourced from the published rate (HMRC, Bank of England, gov.uk Land Registry fees) or from publicly stated industry ranges. We are reporting how the line items work; we are not telling anyone what to buy or how to fund it.
The reserve, in one table
This is the cash a buyer of a freehold home in England should expect to hold above their deposit at completion and through the first three months of ownership. Stamp Duty figures are calculated against the published HMRC residential rates effective from 1 April 2025 (HMRC, 2026).
| Purchase price | Standard buyer reserve | First-time buyer reserve | Main SDLT line |
|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | £4,000 – £6,500 | £3,500 – £6,000 | £500 / £0 (FTB) |
| £200,000 | £5,500 – £8,000 | £4,000 – £6,500 | £1,500 / £0 (FTB) |
| £250,000 | £7,000 – £9,500 | £4,500 – £7,000 | £2,500 / £0 (FTB) |
| £300,000 | £9,500 – £12,500 | £4,500 – £7,500 | £5,000 / £0 (FTB) |
| £400,000 | £15,500 – £19,000 | £10,500 – £14,000 | £10,000 / £5,000 (FTB) |
| £500,000 | £21,500 – £25,500 | £16,500 – £20,500 | £15,000 / £10,000 (FTB) |
| £750,000 | £35,500 – £41,000 | £35,500 – £41,000 | £27,500 (FTB relief lost above £500k) |
| £1,000,000 | £53,000 – £60,000 | £53,000 – £60,000 | £43,750 (relief lost) |
Stamp Duty figures were re-calculated against Homecost's live SDLT engine on 15 May 2026 and cross-checked against HMRC's published bands.
What goes into the reserve
A reserve covers everything outside the deposit that a buyer must pay either at completion or within the first three months. It is separate from the deposit and the mortgage; the lender will not advance funds for these line items.
1. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT)
The largest single line for English and Northern Irish buyers above £125,000. The current bands (effective 1 April 2025):
| Slice of price | Standard rate | First-time buyer rate |
|---|---|---|
| Up to £125,000 | 0% | 0% |
| £125,001 – £250,000 | 2% | 0% |
| £250,001 – £300,000 | 5% | 0% |
| £300,001 – £500,000 | 5% | 5% |
| £500,001 – £925,000 | 5% | (no relief — full standard ladder) |
| £925,001 – £1.5m | 10% | (no relief) |
| Above £1.5m | 12% | (no relief) |
First-time buyer relief is restricted to purchases of £500,000 or less; above that, the full standard ladder applies (HMRC, 2026). An additional 5% surcharge applies to second homes and buy-to-let purchases, and a separate 2% non-resident surcharge applies on top.
2. Conveyancing and disbursements
A solicitor or licensed conveyancer carries out the legal transfer. Typical fees sit in the £850 – £1,500 range for legal work, plus £250 – £450 of disbursements (local authority searches, drainage, environmental, bankruptcy check) and the Land Registry fee. The Land Registry fee for a registered freehold sale is on a published scale: £45 for property values up to £100,000, rising to £455 for £500,001 – £1m and £1,105 above £1m (HM Land Registry fees order, 2026).
Realistic budgeting range for an England/Wales freehold sale: £1,500 – £2,500 all-in. Leasehold flats and unregistered titles often run higher because of management-pack and additional registration fees.
3. Survey
Three levels published by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS):
| RICS level | Typical price | When buyers use it |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 (Condition Report) | £400 – £900 | Modern, conventional homes in good order |
| Level 2 (HomeBuyer Report) | £400 – £1,000 | Standard-construction homes a few decades old |
| Level 3 (Building Survey) | £600 – £1,500+ | Older or altered properties; bespoke construction |
A mortgage valuation, where the lender charges for one, sits separately at typically £200 – £500 and is not a substitute for a buyer's own survey. Many lenders bundle the valuation into the product fee.
4. Mortgage product and arrangement fees
A typical residential mortgage product fee in 2026 sits in the £0 – £1,500 range, charged by the lender for the product itself. It can usually be added to the loan but is interest-bearing if rolled in. The Bank of England's quoted rate file shows a 75% LTV 5-year fix at 4.32% for April 2026, down from 4.62% in May 2025 (Bank of England effective interest rates, 2026). Higher-LTV products typically attract higher rates and sometimes higher product fees.
5. Moving costs and immediate setup
Removals: typical range £400 – £1,500 for a household move within the UK, varying widely by distance and volume. Buildings insurance from completion day: £200 – £400/year for a typical freehold home. First council-tax instalment, utility connections, change-of-address admin, and an initial maintenance float (a boiler service, a missing fence panel, the inevitable lock change) add a further £500 – £1,500 of one-off spend in the first three months.
6. Snagging contingency (new builds) or repair float (resales)
A common rule-of-thumb in the consumer press is 0.5% – 1.0% of the purchase price for the first 12 months. On a £300,000 home that is £1,500 – £3,000 set aside; on a £500,000 home it is £2,500 – £5,000. Not all of this gets spent — but the underlying repair risk does not vary much with how much cash the buyer kept back, only with the age and condition of the home. Try a postcode in Manchester on the Homecost tool to see how floor area, age band and EPC rating combine for an individual property.
How the bands break down
Up to £200,000 — typical reserve £4,000–£8,000
Most cash goes on conveyancing, survey, removals and the first months of running costs. SDLT is minimal: £0 for first-time buyers, £500 on a £150,000 standard purchase, £1,500 on £200,000. The data shows the entry-level market remains active: Land Registry recorded 128,989 sales under £150,000 in 2025 across England and Wales, with an average price of £105,149, concentrated in postcode areas such as TS3 (Middlesbrough), BD1/BD3 (Bradford), HU3 (Hull) and SR8 (Peterlee). For a deeper look at this band, see our monthly cost of a £150,000 mortgage guide.
£250,000–£400,000 — typical reserve £7,000–£19,000
This is the band where SDLT starts to bite, and where the first-time-buyer band has the widest effect: standard buyers pay £2,500 at £250,000 (a 1.0% reserve hit) and £10,000 at £400,000 (2.5%); first-time buyers pay £0 and £5,000. The category page for all Cost Intelligence guides gathers Homecost's worked-example pieces in this band.
£500,000 — relief cliff
First-time buyer relief stops at £500,000. A buyer at £499,999 pays £9,999.95 in SDLT with relief; a buyer at £500,001 pays £15,000.05 without it. That is a £5,000 cliff at the threshold and it shows up empirically in the data — see the £500,000 stamp duty cliff analysis for the bunching pattern.
£750,000+ — reserve dominated by SDLT
At this level the SDLT bill alone is £27,500 standard (rising to £43,750 at £1m) and first-time buyer relief is gone. The reserve quickly becomes a stamp-duty number with everything else priced in around it.
Why the reserve matters more than buyers think
The Financial Conduct Authority's Mortgage Conduct of Business rules require lenders to stress-test affordability before lending. They do not stress-test the cash float a buyer holds after completion. That float is the buyer's own line of defence against a six-month surprise — a boiler that fails in November, a job change that delays the first remortgage, a buy-side surveyor's report that flags work the seller agrees to share. Buyers who arrive at completion with the deposit-plus-fees and nothing else are not insolvent; they are unhedged. The reserve is the hedge.
A few patterns Homecost sees consistently in the Land Registry record:
- Round-number prices cluster heavily at SDLT slab boundaries (the £500,000 cliff is the sharpest, with the dataset also showing a 12.6× clustering ratio at £750,000 and 29.6× at £1m round numbers — anchoring effects rather than tax effects alone).
- Average sale prices vary 6× across UK postcode areas in 2025 (~£85,000 in TS3 to £6.2m in W1K); the reserve scales differently than the deposit because not all line items scale linearly with price.
- The 75% LTV 5-year fixed rate has fallen from 4.62% in May 2025 to 4.32% in April 2026, a 30-basis-point drift that improves new-buyer cash positions modestly but does not change the at-completion reserve mix.
A walked example: £300,000 standard buyer in Manchester
A 90 m² 3-bed terrace in M14 selling for £300,000 to a non-first-time buyer with a 20% deposit. The reserve looks like this (figures from the published rates and ranges above):
| Line item | Amount |
|---|---|
| SDLT | £5,000 |
| Conveyancing + disbursements | £1,800 |
| RICS Level 2 survey | £700 |
| Mortgage product fee | £999 (typical for a 75% LTV product) |
| Buildings insurance, year one | £280 |
| Removals | £900 |
| Utilities setup, first council-tax instalment | £450 |
| Repair float (1%) | £3,000 |
| Total reserve at completion + 3 months | £13,129 |
The £300,000 deposit at 20% is £60,000. The reserve is therefore an extra ~22% of cash on top of the deposit — not a tax, just a planning number. For first-time buyers in the same scenario, SDLT drops to £0, taking the reserve to around £8,129. See the true cost of buying a £300,000 home for the full ownership stack.
A note on regional variation
The figures above are for England and Northern Ireland (SDLT). Scotland operates Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) with different bands and an Additional Dwelling Supplement; Wales operates Land Transaction Tax (LTT). The non-tax reserve lines (conveyancing, survey, removals, insurance) are broadly comparable across the UK, but the tax line shifts materially between regimes. The full cross-regime comparison is on the stamp duty first-time-buyer relief explainer.
What's not in this reserve
Not included:
- The deposit itself (5%, 10%, 20% etc. of the price). The reserve is above the deposit.
- Ongoing monthly costs (mortgage, council tax, energy, insurance). Those sit in the True Cost monthly stack — see Homecost's per-postcode breakdown via the main tool.
- Optional extras (chartered building surveyor for unusual properties, specialist EPC retrofit reports, structural-engineer fees on listed buildings). These can add £1,000+ for older or atypical properties.
For a complementary checklist of fee-side surprises, see Homecost's hidden costs of buying explainer, which inventories nine commonly missed line items in detail.
This is general information, not advice. The reserve sizes above are typical published ranges; an individual buyer's actual costs will depend on lender choice, location, property type and personal circumstances. Speak to a qualified conveyancer, mortgage broker or financial adviser before acting.
Based on 30.98 million Land Registry transactions and HMRC's published 2026 SDLT rates. Data as of 15 May 2026.