London landlords contribute to eye-watering stamp duty payments

Landlords in London contributed to an extraordinary £440m in stamp duty paid on purchases in the first six months since the end of the stamp duty holiday in September 2021.

Research by legal technology firm  Access Legal involved analysis of the number of properties sold and the average stamp duty paid across the UK’s 100 largest towns and cities during the first six months since the return of pre-pandemic rates, which had been on pause by the government to help boost the property market. 

Of the estimated £679m generated for the Treasury by these 100 locations, around £442m – or nearly two-thirds of the total – came from London sales. This was followed by Bristol, where buyers paid £19.1m and Reading (£9.78m).

The rest of the top 10 were Cambridge, St Albans, Oxford, Woking, Brighton, Slough and Bath.

Unsurprisingly, buyers in London contribute the most SDLT, with the average buyer forking out an eye-watering £26,133 on their homes. They are closely followed by buyers in St Albans and Oxford, paying averages of £21,213 and £18,976 respectively. 

The research also reveals a clear North-South divide, with the 10 areas that paid the most total SDLT in the South and the 10 towns and cities that paid the lowest on average all in the North of England. 

The lowest paying were Blackpool, Hartlepool, Bradford, Hull, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Barnsley, Blackburn, Rotherham and Rochdale.

Since the UK government’s stamp duty holiday ended last September, strong demand for homes and a lack of supply have kept prices high. 

Some first time buyers are now no longer benefitting from any exemption, which only applies to properties valued up to £300,000. First-time buyers in London, St Albans, Oxford, Woking and Bath paid exactly the same amount of duty, on average, as seasoned homeowners, suggesting that only a tiny number qualified for the exemption. 

By contrast, buyers in Blackpool pay the least amount of stamp duty, at just £341 for the average transaction, while first-time purchasers there paid nothing. 

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