Stamp Duty changes since April 2025: a before-and-after guide
Since 1 April 2025, almost every home mover in England has paid more Stamp Duty than they would have a year earlier. The tax-free threshold halved, first-time buyer relief shrank, and — from the previous autumn — the surcharge on additional properties rose by two percentage points.
For a standard purchase above £250,000, the change adds a flat £2,500 to the bill. For a first-time buyer between £300,000 and £500,000 it can add £6,250 or more. This guide sets out exactly what changed, when, and what it means for each type of buyer — with before-and-after figures based on the current HMRC rates.
Two changes, two dates
Two separate changes reshaped the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) bill in England and Northern Ireland:
- 31 October 2024 — the higher-rate surcharge on additional properties (second homes, most buy-to-lets, most company purchases) rose from 3% to 5%.
- 1 April 2025 — the temporary thresholds introduced in September 2022 expired. The standard nil-rate band fell from £250,000 back to £125,000, the first-time buyer nil-rate band fell from £425,000 to £300,000, and the maximum price at which first-time buyer relief applies fell from £625,000 to £500,000.
The September 2022 thresholds were always time-limited; the April 2025 figures are a return to the levels that applied before then (HMRC). None of this touches Scotland, which charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), or Wales, which charges Land Transaction Tax (LTT) — both set their own bands, as our cross-regime comparison of SDLT, LBTT and LTT explains.
The current SDLT bands (England and Northern Ireland)
| Slice of the price | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £125,000 | 0% |
| £125,001 to £250,000 | 2% |
| £250,001 to £925,000 | 5% |
| £925,001 to £1,500,000 | 10% |
| Above £1,500,000 | 12% |
SDLT is a slab tax: each rate applies only to the slice of the price that falls in its band, not to the whole price. The headline change on 1 April 2025 was the reinstated 2% band between £125,000 and £250,000 — a slice that was tax-free under the temporary regime.
Standard buyers: a flat £2,500 more above £250,000
A standard buyer is someone moving home who is not a first-time buyer and is not buying an additional property.
| Purchase price | SDLT before 1 Apr 2025 | SDLT now | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| £125,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| £200,000 | £0 | £1,500 | +£1,500 |
| £250,000 | £0 | £2,500 | +£2,500 |
| £300,000 | £2,500 | £5,000 | +£2,500 |
| £425,000 | £8,750 | £11,250 | +£2,500 |
| £500,000 | £12,500 | £15,000 | +£2,500 |
For anyone buying above £250,000 the increase is a flat £2,500 — the cost of the reinstated 2% band (2% of the £125,000 slice between £125,000 and £250,000). Between £125,000 and £250,000 the extra is 2% of the part above £125,000, so £1,500 on a £200,000 home. At or below £125,000 the bill is unchanged at zero. A £300,000 purchase now carries £5,000 of SDLT, an effective rate of 1.67% (HMRC current rates).
First-time buyers: the biggest swing
First-time buyer relief still exists, but it is less generous and cuts off earlier. The nil-rate band fell from £425,000 to £300,000, and relief now disappears entirely above £500,000 rather than £625,000.
| Purchase price | First-time buyer SDLT before 1 Apr 2025 | First-time buyer SDLT now | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| £300,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| £425,000 | £0 | £6,250 | +£6,250 |
| £500,000 | £3,750 | £10,000 | +£6,250 |
| £600,000 | £8,750 | £20,000* | +£11,250 |
| £625,000 | £10,000 | £21,250* | +£11,250 |
*Above £500,000, first-time buyer relief no longer applies and the standard rates in the table above are used instead.
Two effects stack up. First, the 5% band now starts at £300,000 instead of £425,000, so a first-time buyer at £425,000 goes from a £0 bill to £6,250. Second, the relief ceiling dropped to £500,000 — so a first-time buyer at £600,000, who would once have paid £8,750 with relief, now gets no relief at all and pays the full standard £20,000.
The relief itself is now worth at most £5,000 (the saving on purchases between £300,000 and £500,000), down from up to £8,750 under the temporary regime. The £500,000 ceiling also creates a hard cliff edge for first-time buyers at £500,000: a pound over the limit removes the relief entirely. Our first-time buyer relief guide walks through who qualifies and how the relief is claimed.
Second homes and buy-to-let: the surcharge rose first
A buyer of an additional dwelling — a second home, a buy-to-let, or in most cases a company purchase — pays a surcharge on top of the standard rates, charged on the whole purchase price. On 31 October 2024 that surcharge rose from 3% to 5%.
The table below holds the standard rates at today's level to isolate the surcharge change. The "3% surcharge" column shows what the same purchase would cost if the surcharge were still at its old rate.
| Purchase price | Standard SDLT | With 3% surcharge | With 5% surcharge (now) |
|---|---|---|---|
| £250,000 | £2,500 | £10,000 | £15,000 |
| £300,000 | £5,000 | £14,000 | £20,000 |
| £500,000 | £15,000 | £30,000 | £40,000 |
On a £300,000 second home the surcharge alone is now £15,000 — £6,000 more than the £9,000 it would have been at 3% — on top of the £5,000 standard charge. The surcharge applies to additional dwellings costing £40,000 or more, and HMRC's rules set out the limited reliefs and the refund route where a previous main home is sold within the time limit. The separate 2% surcharge for non-UK residents, introduced in April 2021, is unchanged and stacks on top where it applies.
Who is affected
The change reaches a large share of the market. Of 741,098 standard residential sales recorded in 2025, 31% fell in the £125,000–£250,000 band that now attracts up to £2,500 of SDLT — a charge that did not exist under the temporary regime. A further 7.7% sat between £500,000 and £625,000, the range where first-time buyers lost relief entirely.
These figures are based on HM Land Registry Price Paid records for sales completed in 2025; the data covers England and Wales, and Welsh buyers pay LTT rather than SDLT, but the distribution shows how purchases spread across the price bands. (See more data-led guides on the Homecost blog.) The way sales cluster just below round thresholds is a long-standing pattern — our analysis of bunching at the £250,000 threshold shows the effect in the transaction data, and our guide to where SDLT disappears entirely maps the parts of the country where most homes sell below the nil-rate band.
Working out your own bill
Because SDLT is a slab tax, your bill depends on how the price is split across the bands — not on jumping a single threshold, except for the first-time-buyer and additional-property cut-offs. You can model any scenario — mover, first-time buyer, second home, or non-resident — on the Homecost Stamp Duty calculator, which applies all four UK regimes and the current reliefs.
To see Stamp Duty alongside the mortgage, council tax and running costs for real homes on a street, enter a postcode such as M1 1AE in Manchester and open any property. For more on costs and thresholds, browse the Cost Intelligence guides.
These figures reflect HMRC rates current at 29 June 2026 and are general information, not advice. A conveyancer confirms the exact figure and any relief eligibility on completion. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.