In Kensington and Chelsea a single stamp duty bill buys 36 years of council tax; in Barking and Dagenham, barely four.
Across London's 33 boroughs, a home mover's one-off stamp duty bill ranges from under five years' worth of council tax to well over three decades of it — and the gap has almost nothing to do with which borough is more expensive to buy in.
The method
Every figure below comes from two sources fetched on 4 September 2026: the 2025 median sale price for each borough (HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, category-A transactions, houses and flats, 83,335 sales across all 33 boroughs, pooled London median £530,000), and each borough's 2026-27 Band D council tax charge (gov.uk local authority levels). Stamp duty is calculated at the standard home-mover rate — no first-time buyer relief, no additional-property surcharge — using Homecost's stamp duty calculator. Dividing the stamp duty figure by the annual Band D charge gives a rough "years of council tax" equivalent: not a real cost comparison (one is a one-off tax, 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
| Borough | 2025 median price | Stamp duty (mover) | Band D 2026-27 | Years of council tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kensington and Chelsea | £1,165,000 | £60,250 | £1,666.65 | 36.2 |
| Westminster | £875,000 | £33,750 | £1,049.55 | 32.2 |
| City of London | £810,000 | £30,500 | £1,329.56 | 22.9 |
| Wandsworth | £650,000 | £22,500 | £1,028.21 | 21.9 |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | £705,000 | £25,250 | £1,519.51 | 16.6 |
| Camden | £775,000 | £28,750 | £2,207.55 | 13.0 |
| Islington | £647,500 | £22,375 | £2,108.15 | 10.6 |
| Richmond upon Thames | £720,000 | £26,000 | £2,486.10 | 10.5 |
| Hackney | £585,000 | £19,250 | £2,060.30 | 9.3 |
| Barnet | £580,000 | £19,000 | £2,132.60 | 8.9 |
| Southwark | £535,000 | £16,750 | £1,967.26 | 8.5 |
| Lambeth | £542,012 | £17,101 | £2,047.11 | 8.4 |
| Merton | £550,000 | £17,500 | £2,146.76 | 8.2 |
| Tower Hamlets | £500,000 | £15,000 | £1,837.78 | 8.2 |
| Haringey | £575,000 | £18,750 | £2,313.78 | 8.1 |
| Brent | £550,000 | £17,500 | £2,235.27 | 7.8 |
| Ealing | £535,000 | £16,750 | £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 |
| Hounslow | £485,000 | £14,250 | £2,185.56 | 6.5 |
| Newham | £450,000 | £12,500 | £1,944.23 | 6.4 |
| Enfield | £480,000 | £14,000 | £2,267.67 | 6.2 |
| Greenwich | £460,000 | £13,000 | £2,107.86 | 6.2 |
| Lewisham | £475,000 | £13,750 | £2,237.33 | 6.1 |
| Sutton | £460,000 | £13,000 | £2,378.64 | 5.5 |
| Havering | £450,994 | £12,550 | £2,424.66 | 5.2 |
| Bexley | £430,000 | £11,500 | £2,366.36 | 4.9 |
| Croydon | £425,000 | £11,250 | £2,599.91 | 4.3 |
| Barking and Dagenham | £382,500 | £9,125 | £2,198.51 | 4.2 |
Why the ranking isn't a simple price ranking
If stamp duty in years of council tax simply tracked house prices, the table above would look identical to a straight price ranking. It doesn't. Wandsworth (£650,000 median) outranks Camden (£775,000) despite a lower purchase price, because Wandsworth's Band D charge of £1,028.21 is the lowest of any billing authority in England, while Camden's is more than double at £2,207.55. The stamp duty bill is set entirely by price; the council tax denominator is set by each borough's own precept decisions, and the two move independently.
That's the mechanism behind the four boroughs sitting furthest above the general trend — Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, the City of London and Wandsworth — a group where very high prices pair with historically low Band D charges. It's also why Camden and Islington, both firmly in London's most expensive quarter, fall well down the list next to boroughs with median prices under half of theirs: their council tax charges are close to the London average rather than at the low end.
At the other end, outer and east London boroughs combine lower medians with council tax at or above the London average, so a mover's stamp duty bill barely stretches past four or five years of Band D. Barking and Dagenham (£382,500 median, £2,198.51 Band D) sits lowest at 4.2 years; Croydon and Bexley are close behind. None of these are cheap boroughs by national standards — every one of the 33 clears the England-wide median several times over — but within London the spread is still 8.6-fold between the top and bottom of the table.
How this fits the wider picture
This is a London-only cut of a pattern that holds nationally: council tax and house prices are set by different mechanisms and don't move together (see how many years of council tax equal your stamp duty bill for the same calculation run across English and Welsh local authorities outside London). It also sits alongside two other views of the same 33 boroughs: the council tax vs house price inversion, which shows the cheapest Band D charges cluster in the most expensive boroughs, and what share of the monthly bill is council tax, which finds that despite the inversion, council tax is a minor share of the monthly cost of owning in every borough — the mortgage dominates. Years-of-council-tax is a framing device for the one-off bill, not a claim about affordability.
Try it for your own borough
Homecost's postcode tool shows the true cost breakdown — mortgage at today's rate, council tax, energy and stamp duty — for any address in these 33 boroughs, or anywhere else in England and Wales. For a like-for-like stamp duty figure on your own budget, the stamp duty calculator lets you change the price, region and buyer type. More borough-by-borough comparisons are on the Homecost market analysis blog.
Stamp duty thresholds, relief eligibility and council tax bands can all change your actual bill. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting on any figure in this article.