First-time buyer stamp duty relief is usually summed up as a saving "worth up to £5,000". The figure is real, but where that saving actually lands is the opposite of what most buyers assume. Relief is worth the most, in cash, in mid-priced cities such as Bristol and Cambridge; it removes the entire bill across the cheaper North of England; and it is worth nothing at all to a buyer paying the typical price in London — or anywhere in Wales.
Using HM Land Registry sale prices for 2025 and the stamp duty rules in force in 2026, this piece works out exactly what the relief is worth at the median home price in 19 UK cities.
How the relief is built
Since 1 April 2025, a first-time buyer in England or Northern Ireland who is purchasing their only or main home pays no Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) on the first £300,000, then 5% on the portion between £300,001 and £500,000. Above a purchase price of £500,000 the relief is withdrawn in full, and the buyer pays exactly what any other mover pays (HMRC, 2026).
That structure has three consequences the "up to £5,000" shorthand hides:
- Below £300,000, relief removes 100% of the buyer's stamp duty — but because a mover's bill is small at those prices, the cash saved is small too.
- Between £300,000 and £500,000, the saving is a flat £5,000 and never more, whatever the price. We explain the arithmetic in the guide to the £300,000-to-£500,000 relief taper.
- Above £500,000, the saving is £0.
What the relief is worth, city by city
The table below takes each city's 2025 median sale price for houses and flats, then compares what a home mover pays with what an eligible first-time buyer pays at that same price. The difference is what the relief is worth.
| City | 2025 median | Home-mover SDLT | First-time buyer relief worth | Share of the bill removed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hull | £142,000 | £340 | £340 | 100% |
| Liverpool | £182,500 | £1,150 | £1,150 | 100% |
| Bradford | £186,500 | £1,230 | £1,230 | 100% |
| Nottingham | £200,000 | £1,500 | £1,500 | 100% |
| Newcastle | £205,000 | £1,600 | £1,600 | 100% |
| Sheffield | £218,000 | £1,860 | £1,860 | 100% |
| Plymouth | £226,000 | £2,020 | £2,020 | 100% |
| Birmingham | £238,000 | £2,260 | £2,260 | 100% |
| Leicester | £242,000 | £2,340 | £2,340 | 100% |
| Leeds | £248,000 | £2,460 | £2,460 | 100% |
| Manchester | £250,000 | £2,500 | £2,500 | 100% |
| Bristol | £350,000 | £7,500 | £5,000 | 67% |
| Bath | £400,000 | £10,000 | £5,000 | 50% |
| Oxford | £450,000 | £12,500 | £5,000 | 40% |
| Cambridge | £494,250 | £14,713 | £5,000 | 34% |
| London | £530,000 | £16,500 | £0 | 0% |
Prices are 2025 median sales of houses and flats (HM Land Registry Price Paid, standard "category A" transactions). Stamp duty figures are calculated on the 2026 SDLT rates and rounded to the nearest pound.
Three places the relief barely reaches
London. The median London home sold for £530,000 in 2025 — above the £500,000 ceiling. A first-time buyer paying that price receives no relief and pays the full £16,500, exactly as a mover would. This is not a fringe case: 54.0% of London's 83,335 standard sales in 2025 were priced above £500,000, and only 10.5% were at or below the £300,000 nil-rate band. Relief still applies to individual homes under £500,000 in the cheaper boroughs, but the typical London purchase now sits above the cliff. The full borough picture is in the average house price in London guide.
Wales. Welsh buyers do not pay SDLT — they pay Land Transaction Tax (LTT), and LTT has no first-time buyer relief of any kind. The stamp duty calculator returns this in plain terms for a Welsh postcode: "Wales has no first-time buyer relief." So a first-time buyer and a home mover pay the same LTT at every price:
| Welsh city | 2025 median | LTT (mover and first-time buyer) | First-time buyer relief worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swansea | £207,500 | £0 | £0 |
| Newport | £239,995 | £900 | £0 |
| Cardiff | £270,000 | £2,700 | £0 |
Swansea's median sits below the £225,000 LTT nil-rate band, so there is no tax to relieve in the first place; but at Cardiff's £270,000 median a first-time buyer pays the full £2,700, where an English buyer at the same price would pay nothing. How the three UK regimes diverge is set out in the guide to how SDLT, LBTT and LTT compare.
The £5,000 ceiling. Because the relief can never be worth more than the £5,000 value of the nil-rate band, the buyers facing the largest bills get proportionally the least help. A Cambridge first-time buyer at the £494,250 median saves £5,000 on a £14,713 bill — just 34% of it. Bristol, Bath, Oxford and Cambridge all receive the identical £5,000, even though their prices span £144,000.
Where the relief does the most work
Switch the lens from cash to the share of the bill removed, and the map inverts. In every English city with a median at or below £300,000 — from Hull to Manchester — first-time buyer relief removes 100% of the stamp duty a mover would owe. The buyer pays literally nothing. Manchester, with a median of exactly £250,000, sits on the last full-relief rung before the £300,000 boundary, saving £2,500.
So the relief is, in effect, two different policies. In the North and Midlands it is a clean exemption that wipes out a modest bill entirely. In the pricier South it is a flat £5,000 discount that shrinks against the total as prices rise, then vanishes once a home crosses £500,000. The same rule that saves a Hull buyer their whole £340 saves a Cambridge buyer a third of theirs and a typical London buyer nothing. This regional split is the mirror image of affordability itself, which we mapped in the cities where a £50,000 salary buys the median home.
The national picture
Across England, of 738,927 standard house and flat sales in 2025:
- 50.4% sold at or below £300,000 — where relief, for an eligible buyer, removes the whole bill.
- 30.8% sold in the £300,000-to-£500,000 band — where the saving is the flat £5,000.
- 18.9% sold above £500,000 — where the relief no longer applies.
Put another way: the maximum the relief can ever be worth to anyone — £5,000 — is available to fewer than a third of buyers, and close to one in five buy above the point where it disappears. For a worked example of how that plays out at neighbourhood level, see the first-time buyer foothold sectors in Birmingham.
Who actually qualifies
Relief applies only where every purchaser is a first-time buyer who has never owned a residential property anywhere in the world, the property is bought as an only or main residence, and the price is £500,000 or less. Buying with a partner who already owns — or has ever owned — a home removes the relief for the whole purchase. Eligibility is confirmed by a conveyancer on completion.
This is general information, not advice, and stamp duty rules change. Speak to a qualified adviser before acting.
Check the figure for your own price
You can reproduce any row above, or test your own price, in the stamp duty calculator with first-time buyer relief applied — switch the first-time buyer toggle on and off to see the saving. To see the full monthly cost behind a headline price, open the true-cost view for a sample postcode such as M1 1AE in Manchester, or browse more market analysis.
Based on 738,927 HM Land Registry transactions and the 2026 SDLT and LTT rate tables. See how we source our data.