Not one of London's 33 boroughs lets a first-time buyer's stamp duty bill fall to zero — and in 22 of them, first-time buyer relief makes no difference at all.
That's the London-specific twist on a calculation Homecost has already run nationally: converting a one-off stamp duty bill into "years of council tax" makes an abstract number tangible by comparing it with a recurring bill the reader already pays. Run across every English and Welsh local authority, several of the cheapest areas collapse to exactly zero years once first-time buyer relief is applied, because their typical sale price sits at or below the £300,000 nil-rate threshold. In London, none do. Even the capital's least expensive borough for a typical first-time buyer, Barking and Dagenham, has a 2025 median of £382,500 — comfortably above the point where relief would wipe the bill out entirely.
The method
Every figure below was pulled on 9 September 2026 from three sources: 2025 median sale prices for each of London's 33 boroughs (HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, category-A transactions covering houses and flats), each borough's 2026-27 Band D council tax charge (gov.uk local authority levels), and stamp duty calculated with first-time buyer relief applied via Homecost's stamp duty calculator. Dividing the first-time buyer stamp duty figure by the annual Band D charge gives a "years of council tax" equivalent — not a real cost comparison, since one is a one-off tax and the other a recurring bill, but a way of putting a one-off number into a household-budget frame of reference.
The 33-borough table, with relief applied
| Borough | 2025 median price | Stamp duty (first-time buyer) | Band D 2026-27 | Years of council tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kensington and Chelsea | £1,180,000 | £61,750 | £1,666.65 | 37.1 |
| Westminster | £880,000 | £34,000 | £1,049.55 | 32.4 |
| City of London | £820,000 | £31,000 | £1,329.56 | 23.3 |
| Wandsworth | £650,000 | £22,500 | £1,028.21 | 21.9 |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | £706,000 | £25,300 | £1,519.51 | 16.7 |
| Camden | £780,000 | £29,000 | £2,207.55 | 13.1 |
| Islington | £650,000 | £22,500 | £2,108.15 | 10.7 |
| Richmond upon Thames | £720,500 | £26,025 | £2,486.10 | 10.5 |
| Hackney | £590,000 | £19,500 | £2,060.30 | 9.5 |
| Barnet | £580,000 | £19,000 | £2,132.60 | 8.9 |
| Southwark | £535,000 | £16,750 | £1,967.26 | 8.5 |
| Lambeth | £543,500 | £17,175 | £2,047.11 | 8.4 |
| Merton | £550,000 | £17,500 | £2,146.76 | 8.2 |
| Haringey | £575,000 | £18,750 | £2,313.78 | 8.1 |
| Brent | £550,000 | £17,500 | £2,235.27 | 7.8 |
| Ealing | £533,475 | £16,674 | £2,138.53 | 7.8 |
| Bromley | £525,000 | £16,250 | £2,140.04 | 7.6 |
| Hillingdon | £510,000 | £15,500 | £2,045.46 | 7.6 |
| Waltham Forest | £540,000 | £17,000 | £2,386.96 | 7.1 |
| Harrow | £550,000 | £17,500 | £2,511.07 | 7.0 |
| Redbridge | £510,000 | £15,500 | £2,294.58 | 6.8 |
| Kingston upon Thames | £550,000 | £17,500 | £2,609.20 | 6.7 |
| Tower Hamlets | £500,000 | £10,000 | £1,837.78 | 5.4 |
| Hounslow | £485,000 | £9,250 | £2,185.56 | 4.2 |
| Enfield | £480,000 | £9,000 | £2,267.67 | 4.0 |
| Newham | £451,200 | £7,560 | £1,944.23 | 3.9 |
| Lewisham | £470,000 | £8,500 | £2,237.33 | 3.8 |
| Greenwich | £460,000 | £8,000 | £2,107.86 | 3.8 |
| Sutton | £455,000 | £7,750 | £2,378.64 | 3.3 |
| Havering | £450,988 | £7,549 | £2,424.66 | 3.1 |
| Bexley | £430,000 | £6,500 | £2,366.36 | 2.7 |
| Croydon | £425,000 | £6,250 | £2,599.91 | 2.4 |
| Barking and Dagenham | £382,500 | £4,125 | £2,198.51 | 1.9 |
The range runs from 1.9 years in Barking and Dagenham to 37.1 years in Kensington and Chelsea — a near-20-fold spread, even after relief has already stripped out the tax bill entirely on the cheaper end nationally. Within London, it never gets that far.
Why relief never zeroes out the bill here
First-time buyer relief removes stamp duty entirely below £300,000, and applies a flat maximum saving of £5,000 on homes priced between £300,000 and £500,000 (relief is withdrawn in full above £500,000, at which point a first-time buyer pays exactly the same as a home mover). London's problem, from a relief standpoint, is that its housing market barely touches the bottom band. Every one of the 33 boroughs has a 2025 median above £300,000, so nowhere in London does the nil-rate threshold produce the clean zero seen in cheaper English and Welsh authorities (see the national version of this calculation, where Hull, Middlesbrough and County Durham all land at exactly zero years).
Where the £5,000 saving actually lands
Only 11 of the 33 boroughs have a 2025 median low enough to fall inside the £300,000–£500,000 taper, where the saving is a fixed £5,000 regardless of exactly where in that band the price sits. Tower Hamlets sits precisely on the £500,000 boundary — the relief still applies there in full, because the cliff edge falls on the next pound, not on £500,000 itself.
| Borough | 2025 median price | Mover stamp duty | First-time buyer stamp duty | Relief saving | Years of council tax saved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barking and Dagenham | £382,500 | £9,125 | £4,125 | £5,000 | 2.3 |
| Croydon | £425,000 | £11,250 | £6,250 | £5,000 | 1.9 |
| Bexley | £430,000 | £11,500 | £6,500 | £5,000 | 2.1 |
| Havering | £450,988 | £12,549 | £7,549 | £5,000 | 2.1 |
| Newham | £451,200 | £12,560 | £7,560 | £5,000 | 2.6 |
| Sutton | £455,000 | £12,750 | £7,750 | £5,000 | 2.1 |
| Greenwich | £460,000 | £13,000 | £8,000 | £5,000 | 2.4 |
| Lewisham | £470,000 | £13,500 | £8,500 | £5,000 | 2.2 |
| Enfield | £480,000 | £14,000 | £9,000 | £5,000 | 2.2 |
| Hounslow | £485,000 | £14,250 | £9,250 | £5,000 | 2.3 |
| Tower Hamlets | £500,000 | £15,000 | £10,000 | £5,000 | 2.7 |
The saving is identical in cash terms across all 11 — £5,000, or roughly two to two-and-a-half years of council tax depending on the borough's own Band D charge — because the relief is a flat reduction inside this band, not a percentage of price. The other 22 boroughs, all with 2025 medians above £500,000, get no saving whatsoever: their first-time buyer figure is identical to the home-mover figure already published in Homecost's mover-only borough ranking.
The same mechanism, a different level of pain
As with the mover version of this table, the ranking here isn't a simple price ranking. Wandsworth (£650,000 median, relief already lost) still outranks several cheaper boroughs because its Band D charge of £1,028.21 is the lowest of any London authority — the stamp duty bill is fixed by price, but the council tax denominator is fixed by each borough's own precept decisions, and the two move independently. For a fuller picture of how the £500,000 relief cliff plays out for first-time buyers nationally, Homecost's national ceiling map shows which local authorities keep the relief and which have priced themselves out of it.
Try it for your own budget
Homecost's postcode tool shows the true cost breakdown — mortgage at today's rate, council tax, energy and stamp duty — for any address in Tower Hamlets or any of the other 32 boroughs above. To run the first-time buyer figure against your own price, the stamp duty calculator lets you change the price and buyer type directly. More borough-level breakdowns are on the Homecost buyer guides blog.
Every figure in this piece comes from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, gov.uk's 2026-27 council tax levels, and Homecost's live stamp duty calculator — see the full run of published guides on the Homecost blog for the sourcing behind every borough comparison.
Stamp duty thresholds, relief eligibility and council tax bands can all change your actual bill, and eligibility for first-time buyer relief depends on your own circumstances. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting on any figure in this article.