Three buyers agree to pay £400,000 for the same house on the same street, completing on the same day. The first-time buyer hands over £5,000 in stamp duty. The home mover pays £10,000. The buyer adding a second home or buy-to-let pays £30,000. Same price, same postcode — three different bills, because England and Northern Ireland run three separate Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) schedules depending on who is buying.
This is the map of all three, at every price from £150,000 to £1 million, using SDLT rates in force for 2026. The figures below are effective rates — total tax divided by purchase price. SDLT is charged in slices, like income tax, so the headline band rate is never what you pay on the whole price. The effective rate is the number that actually leaves your account, per pound spent.
The three curves at a glance
Effective rate (total SDLT ÷ price):
| Purchase price | First-time buyer | Home mover | Additional property |
|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | 0% | 0.33% | 5.33% |
| £200,000 | 0% | 0.75% | 5.75% |
| £250,000 | 0% | 1.00% | 6.00% |
| £300,000 | 0% | 1.67% | 6.67% |
| £400,000 | 1.25% | 2.50% | 7.50% |
| £500,000 | 2.00% | 3.00% | 8.00% |
| £750,000 | 3.67% | 3.67% | 8.67% |
| £1,000,000 | 4.38% | 4.38% | 9.38% |
The same ladder in pounds:
| Purchase price | First-time buyer | Home mover | Additional property |
|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | £0 | £500 | £8,000 |
| £200,000 | £0 | £1,500 | £11,500 |
| £250,000 | £0 | £2,500 | £15,000 |
| £300,000 | £0 | £5,000 | £20,000 |
| £400,000 | £5,000 | £10,000 | £30,000 |
| £500,000 | £10,000 | £15,000 | £40,000 |
| £750,000 | £27,500 | £27,500 | £65,000 |
| £1,000,000 | £43,750 | £43,750 | £93,750 |
Figures produced with the Homecost stamp duty calculator on 25 August 2026.
Which curve applies
The three columns are not different tax rates on the same rules — they are different rule sets, and HMRC decides which one applies from the buyer's circumstances at completion:
- First-time buyer. Every purchaser has never owned a residential property anywhere in the world, the property will be their only or main home, and the price is £500,000 or less (HMRC first-time buyers' relief). Below £300,000 the bill is zero.
- Home mover. The standard residential rates — someone replacing a main residence, or a first purchase above £500,000 where the relief no longer reaches.
- Additional property. The purchase leaves the buyer owning two or more dwellings at the end of the day — a second home or a buy-to-let — so a 5% surcharge stacks on top of the standard rates, on most purchases of £40,000 or more.
Three thresholds shape every bill
The curves bend at fixed prices. Knowing where the bends fall explains the whole map:
| Threshold | What changes |
|---|---|
| £125,000 | Home movers start paying — 2% on the slice above |
| £250,000 | Mover rate steps up to 5% on the slice above |
| £300,000 | First-time buyers start paying — 5% on the slice £300,001–£500,000 |
| £500,000 | First-time buyer relief cliff — lost entirely above this price |
| £925,000 | Rate steps up to 10% on the slice above |
| £1,500,000 | Top 12% rate on the slice above |
The £125,000 line is the newest: the standard nil-rate band dropped from £250,000 to £125,000 from 1 April 2025, which is why a home mover now pays where one previously did not. That change is unpacked in the hidden £2,500 that home movers now pay, and the wider April 2025 reset in what changed for SDLT since April 2025.
The £500,001 cliff
The sharpest edge on any of the three curves sits at exactly half a million. At £500,000 a first-time buyer pays £10,000 — an effective 2.00%. At £500,001, one pound more, the relief disappears completely and the bill jumps to £15,000, an effective 3.00%. That single pound costs £5,000. It is the only point on the map where paying fractionally more for a property can add thousands to the tax for almost no extra bricks. The mechanics of that edge are set out in the £500,000 stamp duty cliff edge, and the way relief tapers on the run-up to it in how first-time buyer relief tapers between £300k and £500k.
The second-home line is the mover line plus five points
Read the effective-rate table across and a pattern appears: the additional-property column is exactly five percentage points above the home-mover column at every single price. 0.33% becomes 5.33% at £150,000; 4.38% becomes 9.38% at £1 million. The reason is structural — the additional-dwelling surcharge is a flat 5% levied on the whole purchase price and stacked on the standard rates. It has no starting threshold above £40,000 and no ceiling, so instead of bending the curve it lifts the entire thing straight up by five points. Full detail sits in the 5% additional property surcharge explained.
Where most buyers actually sit
The curves only matter at the prices people pay. Across the 782,603 arm's-length homes sold in England and Wales in 2025 (HM Land Registry price paid data), the median price was £295,000 — a shade under the £300,000 line where first-time buyer relief still zeroes the bill. Half of all sales fell under £300,000; barely one in fifteen reached the £925,000 higher-rate step.
| 2025 sale price | Share of sales | Home-mover effective rate at top of band |
|---|---|---|
| Under £125,000 | 6.9% | 0% |
| £125,000–£250,000 | 30.8% | rising to 1.00% |
| £250,000–£300,000 | 12.7% | rising to 1.67% |
| £300,000–£500,000 | 30.7% | rising to 3.00% |
| £500,000–£925,000 | 15.0% | rising to 3.92% |
| £925,000 and above | 3.8% | 3.92% and up |
For most of the market, then, a first-time buyer is on the flat 0% stretch of their curve while a home mover has only just left it. The four- and five-figure gaps in the tables above open up in the top third of the market, above £300,000 — where 30.7% of 2025 sales landed. Note that Welsh buyers pay Land Transaction Tax rather than SDLT, so the rates here apply to England and Northern Ireland; the sale-price distribution covers England and Wales because that is the footprint of the price paid dataset.
Reading your own number
The three curves converge and diverge only at the thresholds above, so the way to know which figure applies to a specific purchase is to run the exact price and buyer type rather than read a rate off a headline. The Homecost stamp duty calculator does that for England, and for Scotland (LBTT) and Wales (LTT), which run different bands again. To see the same three-curve logic alongside a property's other running costs — council tax, energy from its EPC, and mortgage at the current Bank of England rate — type a postcode into the Homecost true-cost tool. You can also browse the rest of the cost intelligence guides or the full Homecost archive.
SDLT contains reliefs, surcharges and exceptions this overview does not cover — non-UK-resident buyers, mixed-use property, multiple dwellings and shared ownership among them — and rates can change at fiscal events. This is general information, not advice. A conveyancer confirms the rate that applies on completion. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.