England · Research
The £300,000 line: where a first-time buyer in England still pays no stamp duty
A first-time buyer pays no stamp duty up to £300,000, and loses the relief entirely above £500,000. Set those two lines against the median registered sale in each of England's 891 towns and the map splits three ways: in 420 towns (47%, carrying 54% of registered sales) the median buyer pays nothing, and in 93 the relief is gone before the median is reached.
Soloren LeeProperty market research
Three bands and one cliff
The relief has had this shape since 1 April 2025. Nothing is due on the first £300,000. The slice between £300,000 and £500,000 is taxed at 5%. A purchase above £500,000 gets no relief at all and is taxed at the standard residential rates from the first pound, not just on the excess.
That last rule is a cliff, not a slope. At exactly £500,000 the bill is £10,000. The first town in the register past the cap is Crowthorne, with a median of £502,000; a first-time buyer at that price pays £15,100, £5,100 more than a buyer at exactly £500,000. Every figure on this page is produced by the same function that runs the stamp duty calculator on this site, so the article and the tool cannot disagree.
No SDLT at the median
420
47% of towns, 54% of sales
5% slice only
378
42% of towns, 34% of sales
Relief lost
93
10% of towns, 12% of sales
Where the line runs
The count by ONS region. A town is placed by its median registered sale, standard sales only, across the whole data window. The last column weights by sales rather than towns, which is closer to the share of purchases.
| Region | Towns | No SDLT | 5% slice | Relief lost | Sales with no SDLT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North East | 53 | 51 | 2 | 0 | 99% |
| North West | 97 | 83 | 13 | 1 | 95% |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | 70 | 62 | 8 | 0 | 89% |
| East Midlands | 59 | 47 | 12 | 0 | 94% |
| West Midlands | 74 | 54 | 19 | 1 | 83% |
| East of England | 124 | 30 | 81 | 13 | 30% |
| London | 60 | 0 | 33 | 27 | 0% |
| South East | 209 | 24 | 137 | 48 | 11% |
| South West | 145 | 69 | 73 | 3 | 45% |
London is the region where the line does not exist. None of its 60 towns has a median under £300,000, and 27 of them are already past the £500,000 cap at the median, so a first-time buyer at the typical price there is taxed as if the relief had never been introduced.
At the other end, the North East has 51 of its 53 towns under the line. The South East, the largest region in the register, has 24 of 209: the relief is a northern and midlands relief in practice, whatever the statute says.
The towns on the line
Register medians are round numbers because sale prices are, so several towns sit exactly on a line. Those at £300,000 pay nothing; one pound more and the 5% slice starts. At £500,000 the bill is £10,000; one pound more and it jumps by half again.
Last towns under £300,000
| Town | County | Median | First-time buyer SDLT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hastings | East Sussex | £300,000 | £0 |
| Evesham | Worcestershire | £300,000 | £0 |
| Radstock | Bath and North East Somerset | £300,000 | £0 |
| Droitwich | Worcestershire | £300,000 | £0 |
| Cullompton | Devon | £300,000 | £0 |
First towns over £300,000
| Town | County | Median | First-time buyer SDLT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southampton | Hampshire | £301,188 | £59 |
| Devizes | Wiltshire | £301,500 | £75 |
| Helston | Cornwall | £305,000 | £250 |
| Ripon | North Yorkshire | £305,000 | £250 |
| Ivybridge | Devon | £305,000 | £250 |
Last towns inside the £500,000 cap
| Town | County | Median | First-time buyer SDLT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bromley | Greater London | £500,000 | £10,000 |
| Wokingham | Wokingham | £500,000 | £10,000 |
| Windsor | Windsor and Maidenhead | £500,000 | £10,000 |
| Pulborough | West Sussex | £500,000 | £10,000 |
| Isleworth | Greater London | £500,000 | £10,000 |
First towns past the cap
| Town | County | Median | First-time buyer SDLT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crowthorne | Bracknell Forest | £502,000 | £15,100 |
| Greenford | Greater London | £505,000 | £15,250 |
| Harrow | Greater London | £507,500 | £15,375 |
| Guildford | Surrey | £510,000 | £15,500 |
| Wembley | Greater London | £510,000 | £15,500 |
Flats move the line
A town median mixes every property type. Split the register by what a first-time buyer is likely to buy and the picture changes. Leasehold flats have a publishable median in 774 towns, and in 693 of them (90%) that median is under £300,000. Freehold detached houses are the mirror image: under the line in 97 of 878 towns (11%).
| Property | Towns | No SDLT | 5% slice | Relief lost | Sales with no SDLT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leasehold flat | 774 | 693 | 77 | 4 | 65% |
| Freehold terraced | 879 | 563 | 266 | 50 | 68% |
| Freehold semi-detached | 888 | 444 | 329 | 115 | 61% |
| Freehold detached | 878 | 97 | 445 | 336 | 11% |
London is where the split matters most. The capital's town-level median is £580,000, past the cap, with a first-time buyer bill of £19,000. Its leasehold flats, 113,538 registered sales, have a median of £495,000: inside the cap, with a bill of £9,750. Its freehold terraced houses have a median of £800,000 and a bill of £30,000. The relief is worth having on a London flat and worth nothing on a London house.
The bill at the median, town by town
Eleven named towns spanning the three bands, with the stamp duty a first-time buyer would pay at each town's median. The effective rate is the bill as a share of the price.
| Town | Median | Band | SDLT | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manchester | £245,100 | No SDLT | £0 | 0.0% |
| Birmingham | £230,000 | No SDLT | £0 | 0.0% |
| Leeds | £240,000 | No SDLT | £0 | 0.0% |
| Bristol | £350,000 | 5% slice | £2,500 | 0.7% |
| York | £310,000 | 5% slice | £500 | 0.2% |
| Reading | £415,000 | 5% slice | £5,750 | 1.4% |
| Cambridge | £450,000 | 5% slice | £7,500 | 1.7% |
| Wokingham | £500,000 | 5% slice | £10,000 | 2.0% |
| Guildford | £510,000 | Relief lost | £15,500 | 3.0% |
| St Albans | £585,000 | Relief lost | £19,250 | 3.3% |
| London | £580,000 | Relief lost | £19,000 | 3.3% |
What 28 October could change
HM Treasury has confirmed that the Budget will be delivered on Wednesday 28 October 2026. The rates above are the ones in force on the day this was written. The counts are sensitive to where the lines sit: 59 towns have a median within £25,000 above the £300,000 line, so a modest move in the nil-rate band would move them across it.
This page stores no figures. If the rates change and the calculator is updated, every count and every bill here is recomputed from the register and the new bands on the next build.
What this does not say
A median is one number for a whole town. Half of registered sales are below it, and first-time buyers tend to buy below it, so the share of first-time purchases that pay nothing is higher than the share of towns. The register does not record who was a first-time buyer, so that share cannot be measured here.
The relief has conditions the register cannot see: every purchaser must be a first-time buyer, the property must be the main home, and the price paid, not the median, is what is taxed. Shared-ownership purchases have their own rules.
This is market analysis built on published rates and registered prices. It is not tax advice.
Sources
- HMRC, Stamp Duty Land Tax: residential property rates (gov.uk) (accessed 2026-09-11)
- HM Treasury, Budget date confirmed as 28 October 2026 (gov.uk) (accessed 2026-09-11)
Put your own price through the stamp duty calculator, which applies the same bands.
Prices from HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, standard sales only, through 2026-09-30. Rates as published by HMRC. Not tax advice.