SDLT Relief Conditions: Relevant Consideration Must Not Exceed £625,000 for Eligibility

First-time buyer relief and the £625,000 SDLT limit

First-time buyer relief from SDLT is only available if the relevant consideration is no more than £625,000. This is not always just the stated purchase price, because SDLT uses its own rules on chargeable consideration and may require linked transactions to be added together. For lease purchases, rent is ignored only for this specific £625,000 test.

• If the relevant consideration is more than £625,000, first-time buyer relief is not available.
• You must use normal SDLT rules on chargeable consideration, not simply the cash price paid.
• For leases, any rent payable is left out when checking the £625,000 limit.
• If there are no linked transactions, the limit is tested against that transaction alone.
• If transactions are linked, their total chargeable consideration is added together, and if the total exceeds £625,000, none of them qualify for the relief.
• In practice, the hardest issues are often deciding whether transactions are linked and what counts as chargeable consideration.

Scroll down for the full analysis.

First-time buyer relief: the £625,000 consideration limit

This page explains one of the basic conditions for first-time buyer relief from SDLT. The relief is only available if the “relevant consideration” does not exceed £625,000. That sounds simple, but the calculation can be affected by linked transactions and by the way SDLT rules define chargeable consideration.

What this rule is about

First-time buyer relief is not available for every purchase by a first-time buyer. One of the gateway conditions is a price cap. If the relevant consideration is more than £625,000, the relief is not available.

The key point is that this is not always just a question of looking at the headline purchase price in one contract. SDLT uses the concept of chargeable consideration, and it also has special rules for linked transactions. Those rules can mean that more than one transaction has to be looked at together.

What the official source says

The HMRC manual says that relief is only available where the relevant consideration for the transaction is not more than £625,000.

It also says:

• Relevant consideration includes the normal amounts counted when working out chargeable consideration for SDLT.
• If the transaction is a lease, the value of any rent payable under the lease is ignored for this particular £625,000 test.
• If the transaction is not linked to any other transaction, the £625,000 limit is applied to that transaction alone.
• If the transaction is linked to other transactions, the relevant consideration is the total chargeable consideration for all the linked transactions.
• If that total exceeds £625,000, none of the linked transactions qualify for the relief.

What this means in practice

In a straightforward purchase of a single dwelling under one contract, the question will usually be whether the chargeable consideration for that purchase is £625,000 or less.

But there are two practical complications.

First, SDLT looks at chargeable consideration, not just the cash price. The manual does not set out the full rules here, but it makes clear that the normal SDLT rules on chargeable consideration apply. So the right starting point is not simply “what did the buyer pay in cash?” but “what counts as chargeable consideration under SDLT rules?”

Second, if there are linked transactions, the cap is applied to the total consideration across all of them. That can stop relief applying even where each individual transaction is below £625,000.

The special point about leases is narrower. For this £625,000 condition, the rent element is left out. That does not mean rent is irrelevant for all SDLT purposes. It means only that rent is not taken into account when deciding whether this particular first-time buyer relief threshold is met.

How to analyse it

A sensible way to approach the issue is:

• Identify the land transaction for which first-time buyer relief is being considered.
• Work out the chargeable consideration under normal SDLT principles.
• If the transaction is a lease, separate any rent from the other consideration, because the rent is ignored for this threshold test.
• Ask whether there are any linked transactions. This is important where there are multiple contracts, transfers, or connected acquisitions forming part of a single arrangement.
• If there are no linked transactions, compare the consideration for that transaction with the £625,000 limit.
• If there are linked transactions, total the chargeable consideration for all linked transactions and compare that total with the £625,000 limit.
• If the total exceeds £625,000, the manual states that none of the linked transactions qualify for the relief.

The main practical question is often not the arithmetic but whether the transactions are linked and what exactly counts as chargeable consideration.

Example

Illustration: a first-time buyer acquires a dwelling for £610,000 under a single unlinked transaction. On the facts given, the relevant consideration does not exceed £625,000, so this condition would be met.

Now change the facts. The buyer enters into two linked transactions as part of the same arrangement, one for £400,000 and one for £240,000. Each transaction is below £625,000 on its own, but the total for the linked transactions is £640,000. On the HMRC manual’s approach, none of the linked transactions qualify for first-time buyer relief because the combined relevant consideration exceeds £625,000.

Why this can be difficult in practice

The source material is brief, but applying it can still be fact-sensitive.

• Linked transactions can be easy to miss. A buyer may think they are making one purchase, but SDLT may require related transactions to be grouped together.
• Chargeable consideration is a technical SDLT concept. The amount relevant for SDLT may not always match the figure a buyer informally thinks of as the “price”.
• Lease transactions need care. The manual makes clear that rent is ignored for this threshold test, but that does not remove the need to consider rent for other SDLT purposes.

So the difficult part is often identifying the correct legal inputs before applying the simple £625,000 cap.

Key takeaways

• First-time buyer relief is only available if the relevant consideration does not exceed £625,000.
• For this test, you use normal SDLT chargeable consideration rules, except that lease rent is ignored.
• If transactions are linked, you look at the total consideration across all linked transactions, and if that total is above £625,000, the relief is not available for any of them.

This page was last updated on 24 March 2026

Useful article? You may find it helpful to read the original guidance here: SDLT Relief Conditions: Relevant Consideration Must Not Exceed £625,000 for Eligibility

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