How Much Stamp Duty Will You Pay on a Buy-to-Let Property in the UK?
Buy-to-let purchases carry a 5% SDLT surcharge on top of standard rates. Here's exactly how the additional-dwelling surcharge works, and where the exemptions are.
Quick answer: On a buy-to-let purchase in England or Northern Ireland, you pay standard Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) plus a 5% surcharge on the entire purchase price, because it's an "additional dwelling." On a £200,000 buy-to-let, that's roughly £11,500 in SDLT, versus £1,500 on a main residence at the same price.
What Counts as a "Buy-to-Let" for Stamp Duty Purposes?
HMRC doesn't ask what you intend to do with a property — it asks whether you already own another one. If you're buying a second (or subsequent) residential property anywhere in the UK, and you won't have sold your main home by completion, the additional-dwelling surcharge applies automatically. It doesn't matter whether the new property is genuinely a buy-to-let, a holiday home, or a property you're buying for a family member.
How Much Extra Do You Pay on a Second Property?
The surcharge is a flat 5% on top of standard SDLT rates, applied to the whole purchase price from £0 — there's no nil-rate band on the surcharge portion, even though standard SDLT has one. That's why the gap between a main-residence purchase and a buy-to-let purchase widens fastest at the lower end of the market, which is exactly where most of our own deals sit.
Are There Any Exemptions?
The most common one we see: if you're replacing your only or main residence — selling your old home and buying a new one — the surcharge doesn't apply, even temporarily, as long as the sale completes on the same day or you've already sold within the previous 36 months. Companies buying residential property, and purchases under £40,000, are also treated differently. None of these apply to a standard portfolio purchase.
How We Use This in Our Own Deals
SDLT is one of the first numbers we model on every acquisition, not an afterthought — it's a real cash cost that hits before any refurbishment spend, and it changes the deposit you need to have ready on exchange. We run it through our own stamp duty calculator alongside every purchase price we're considering, so the number is exact rather than a rough estimate, before we even get to refurb budgeting in our deal analyser.