Londoners pushed into next stamp duty bracket

Londoners are more likely to pay stamp duty than those in the north of England, according to new research from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

The average price of a home in the capital is now £250,000 which means that first-time buyers are now pushed into the three per cent stamp duty bracket which typically adds £7,500 in tax paid up front on a deposit of £25,000.

Bernard Clarke, spokesperson for the CML, said: "Only three per cent of first-time buyers in London do not pay any stamp duty at all.

"That contrasts with, to take one other region, northern England where 82 per cent of people don''t pay stamp duty at all."

Stamp duty is the tax you pay when you buy a house and since March 2006 there has been a threshold of up to £125,000 before you needed to pay the tax.

The rate is one per cent of your total property price up to £250,000, rising to three per cent on properties between £250,000 and £500,000 and then rises to four per cent for properties priced over half a million pounds.


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