In 2025, 380,620 of the 758,212 residential sales recorded in England — just over half — went through at £300,000 or less, the point up to which a first-time buyer pays no Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) at all. That threshold isn't an arbitrary line: England's own 2025 median sale price was exactly £300,000, so the market splits almost evenly across the one tax boundary that matters most to a first-time buyer.
Wales draws its line somewhere else entirely and lands on a strikingly similar split. Wales has no first-time buyer relief at all — everyone pays Land Transaction Tax (LTT) on the same schedule, whether it's their first home or their fifth — but its standard nil-rate band runs only to £225,000, some £75,000 lower than England's first-time-buyer ceiling. Even so, 21,917 of Wales's 40,925 2025 sales, 53.6% of the market, fell at or under that £225,000 line. A lower threshold, applied to a market that sells for less to begin with, sorts almost the same share of buyers into "pays nothing" as England's higher, first-time-buyer-only line does.
Where the two markets actually sit
Splitting 2025 sales (Land Registry standard price-paid transfers) into the bands that matter for each nation's tax schedule:
| Band | England: sales | England: share | Wales: sales | Wales: share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up to £125,000 | 53,505 | 7.1% | 5,394 | 13.2% |
| £125,001–£225,000 | 177,509 | 23.4% | 16,523 | 40.4% |
| £225,001–£300,000 | 149,606 | 19.7% | 8,717 | 21.3% |
| £300,001–£500,000 | 233,869 | 30.8% | 8,118 | 19.8% |
| Over £500,000 | 143,723 | 19.0% | 2,173 | 5.3% |
| Total | 758,212 | 100% | 40,925 | 100% |
Two things stand out. First, Wales's market is heavily concentrated in the £125,001–£225,000 band (40.4% of all Welsh sales, against 23.4% in England) — a reflection of a national median sale price of £217,500, against England's £300,000. Second, England's over-£500,000 band is nearly four times the size of Wales's as a share of the market (19.0% vs 5.3%): the price range where a first-time buyer's relief disappears entirely is a common outcome for English buyers and a rare one for Welsh buyers.
What buyers actually pay once they cross the line
The bands above translate directly into tax bills, calculated live from each nation's published rate schedule:
| Price | England, standard buyer | England, first-time buyer | Wales (LTT, no FTB relief) |
|---|---|---|---|
| £125,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| £225,000 | £2,000 | £0 | £0 |
| £300,000 | £5,000 | £0 | £4,500 |
| £500,000 | £15,000 | £10,000 | £18,000 |
| £600,000 | £20,000 | £20,000 | £25,500 |
The England columns show why £300,000 is the threshold that matters for a first-time buyer specifically, not the £125,000 nil-rate band that applies to everyone else. A first-time buyer pays nothing up to £300,000, then 5% on the slice between £300,000 and £500,000 — and above £500,000, the relief disappears completely rather than tapering away, so a first-time buyer at £500,001 pays exactly what a standard mover would, as we've detailed separately. Wales offers no equivalent relief to any buyer, but its lower overall prices mean fewer transactions ever reach the point where that would matter.
Why the two thresholds land in such different places
England's £300,000 first-time buyer ceiling and Wales's £225,000 standard nil-rate band were set independently, by different governments, for different reasons — England's to protect a specific class of buyer in a market with a high median price, Wales's as the baseline for everyone in a market that has historically sold for less. Wales's Land Transaction Tax overtakes England's SDLT once prices climb past roughly £350,000, a separate crossover driven by how steeply each nation's marginal bands rise above their nil-rate line, rather than by where that line starts.
The practical effect is that a similar proportion of each nation's buyers — a little over half in England (first-time buyers only), a little over half in Wales (everyone) — currently sit at or under the price where no stamp duty of any kind is due. Above those lines, the two schedules diverge sharply in shape, not just in threshold.
A note on the numbers
These figures come from HM Land Registry's standard price-paid transaction records (category A: full market value residential transfers) for sales dated in 2025, split by nation using each property's local authority code, and queried on 2026-09-12. They describe the price a property sold for, not who bought it or what stamp duty was actually charged on that specific sale — Land Registry doesn't record buyer status, so an individual transaction in, say, the £300,001–£500,000 England band could have been bought by a first-time buyer (partial relief), a home mover (full standard rate) or an additional-property buyer (rate plus 5% surcharge). The bands above show where the market's prices fall relative to each threshold, not a breakdown of tax actually collected.
Based on 799,137 Land Registry transactions across England and Wales in 2025 — part of the wider dataset behind every Cost Intelligence piece on this site.
To see where a specific price sits relative to these thresholds, try the stamp duty calculator or look up a real postcode like M1 1AE in Manchester to see the full cost breakdown for a property in that price range.
Whether stamp duty relief applies to a specific purchase depends on individual circumstances, including prior property ownership and how a purchase is structured. Speak to a qualified conveyancer or tax adviser before acting on any of the figures above.