First-time buyer stamp duty relief in England is worth exactly £5,000 to anyone buying between £300,000 and £500,000 — the saving is flat across the whole band, whatever the price inside it. But reaching that band in the first place takes meaningfully more income than buying in most of the rest of the country. At the 2025 median sale price in Bristol, Bath, Oxford and Cambridge — the four English cities currently sitting inside that £300,000–£500,000 window — a first-time buyer needs a household income of £70,000 to £99,000 on a 10% deposit to qualify for a mortgage large enough to buy, before the relief itself is even applied.
The relief is flat — what it takes to reach it isn't
Since 1 April 2025, a first-time buyer in England pays no stamp duty on the first £300,000 of a purchase, then 5% on the slice between £300,001 and £500,000. Above £500,000 the relief disappears entirely (HMRC, 2026). Because the nil-rate band is fixed, the cash value of the relief — the gap between what a first-time buyer pays and what an ordinary home mover pays at the same price — never changes inside the band:
| Purchase price | First-time buyer SDLT | Standard (mover) SDLT | Relief saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| £300,000 | £0 | £5,000 | £5,000 |
| £350,000 | £2,500 | £7,500 | £5,000 |
| £400,000 | £5,000 | £10,000 | £5,000 |
| £450,000 | £7,500 | £12,500 | £5,000 |
| £495,000 | £9,750 | £14,750 | £5,000 |
| £500,000 | £10,000 | £15,000 | £5,000 |
Figures calculated with the Homecost stamp duty calculator against the live 2026 rate tables, 12 October 2026. We set out the mechanics behind that flat £5,000 in the guide to the £300,000-to-£500,000 relief taper.
What that table doesn't show is who actually buys at these prices. Four English cities currently sit with their 2025 median sale price inside the band: Bristol (£350,000), Bath and North East Somerset (£400,000), Oxford (£450,000) and Cambridge (£495,000) — all four fetched fresh from HM Land Registry Price Paid data on 12 October 2026, scoped to standard house and flat sales (detached, semi, terraced, flat).
What it takes to buy into the band
Most UK lenders size a mortgage at around 4.5 times household income, a convention that reflects the Bank of England's loan-to-income "flow limit" rather than a fixed rule any individual lender must follow. Combined with a deposit, that gives a simple ceiling: the maximum price a household can reach is the loan plus the deposit, which rearranges to income = price × (1 − deposit %) ÷ 4.5 (the same formula we used in mapping which cities a £50,000 salary can reach). Running the four city medians through that arithmetic, alongside the band's own floor and ceiling:
| Price point | Income needed (10% deposit) | Cash deposit (10%) | Income needed (25% deposit) | Cash deposit (25%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £300,000 — nil-rate threshold | £60,000 | £30,000 | £50,000 | £75,000 |
| £350,000 — Bristol 2025 median | £70,000 | £35,000 | £58,333 | £87,500 |
| £400,000 — Bath (B&NES) 2025 median | £80,000 | £40,000 | £66,667 | £100,000 |
| £450,000 — Oxford 2025 median | £90,000 | £45,000 | £75,000 | £112,500 |
| £495,000 — Cambridge 2025 median | £99,000 | £49,500 | £82,500 | £123,750 |
| £500,000 — relief ceiling | £100,000 | £50,000 | £83,333 | £125,000 |
The pattern is straightforward but easy to miss if you only look at the tax saving in isolation: the £5,000 relief is worth exactly the same amount at every point on this table, while the income needed to get there rises by £1,000 for every extra £5,000 of purchase price. A buyer with £70,000 of household income and a 10% deposit can just reach the Bristol median and collect the full £5,000 saving; a buyer on £50,000 cannot reach any of the four cities at all, at either deposit level.
Where £50,000 already buys the whole house, relief included
Contrast that with the other end of the market. Our affordability mapping found that a £50,000 household income with a 10% deposit reaches the 2025 median home in 13 of 19 UK cities measured — Hull, Liverpool, Bradford, Nottingham, Newcastle, Swansea, Sheffield, Plymouth, Birmingham, Newport, Leicester, Leeds and Manchester, which sits exactly on the £250,000 line. Every one of those medians is below the £300,000 nil-rate threshold, which means a first-time buyer there doesn't get a capped £5,000 saving — relief removes their entire stamp duty bill, because there wasn't much of one to start with. What that relief is actually worth, city by city sets out the full 19-city comparison, including London and Wales, where the typical purchase now sits above the band entirely or outside the English regime altogether.
So the same £50,000 household that can buy outright, relief included, in Manchester or Leeds is roughly £20,000 of income short of reaching the Bristol median — the cheapest of the four cities where the relief's maximum cash value actually applies.
Why the comparison matters
None of this makes the £5,000 relief less real — a Bristol, Bath, Oxford or Cambridge first-time buyer genuinely saves that amount against what a mover would pay at the same price. But the households most likely to clear the income bar for that band are, by construction of the lending maths, higher earners than the typical first-time buyer in the cheaper North and Midlands, where the relief instead works as a full exemption on a smaller bill. The £5,000 ceiling sits above the reach of a £50,000–£60,000 household almost everywhere it currently applies.
Every figure in this piece is a rule-of-thumb calculation from public data, not a lending decision — actual affordability depends on a lender's own income multiple, credit assessment, existing debt and stress-testing, which vary by lender and by applicant. Speak to a qualified mortgage adviser before acting on any of the numbers above.
Check your own numbers
Run your own income and deposit through the mortgage affordability calculator, or test a specific price with first-time buyer relief applied on the stamp duty calculator. To see the full monthly cost behind a Bristol purchase at this band, open the true-cost view for a sample postcode such as BS1 4DJ in central Bristol, or browse more Cost Intelligence guides.
Based on HM Land Registry Price Paid transactions for Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, Oxford and Cambridge in 2025, and the 2026 SDLT rate tables. See how we source our data.