What this calculator works out
Everyone saves for the deposit. Almost nobody budgets for everything else, and that is where the ambush happens — usually about three weeks before completion, when the solicitor's bill, the stamp duty and the removal quote all arrive at once and there is no money left. This calculator adds the whole thing up in advance: the cash you need on completion day, and then the first twelve months of actually owning the place.
Two of the figures are not estimates at all — the stamp duty and the Land Registry fee are calculated straight from the published GOV.UK scales, and the stamp duty is shown band by band so you can check it. Everything else is a starting figure that you should overwrite with your own quotes.
Stamp Duty Land Tax — the figures used
Stamp Duty Land Tax applies in England and Northern Ireland. Scotland has Land and Buildings Transaction Tax and Wales has Land Transaction Tax; both have different bands and this calculator does not cover them. SDLT is charged in slices: each rate applies only to the portion of the price that falls inside its band, which is why nobody's whole purchase is ever taxed at 5%.
Standard residential rates, from 1 April 2025
- Up to £125,000 — 0%
- £125,001 to £250,000 — 2%
- £250,001 to £925,000 — 5%
- £925,001 to £1.5 million — 10%
- Above £1.5 million — 12%
First-time buyers' relief, from 1 April 2025
- Up to £300,000 — 0%
- £300,001 to £500,000 — 5%
- Above a purchase price of £500,000 the relief is not available at all, and standard rates apply to the whole price. That cliff edge is worth knowing about before you offer £505,000 on something.
Higher rates for additional dwellings, from 1 April 2025
If the property will not be the only residential property worth £40,000 or more that you own anywhere in the world, higher rates apply: 5%, 7%, 10%, 15% and 17% across the same bands — a five percentage point surcharge throughout. Purchases under £40,000 are outside the higher rates.
Sources, both checked against the primary GOV.UK guidance: residential property rates and higher rates for additional properties. Rates change at Budgets — if you are reading this a long way from 2026, check the GOV.UK pages before you rely on the figure.
The 2% surcharge for non-UK residents, multiple dwellings, mixed-use and non-residential property, linked transactions, shared ownership elections, and the refund you can claim if you sell your previous main home within three years of paying the higher rates. If any of those apply to you, your solicitor is the right person to give you the number.
The HM Land Registry fee
Registering the transfer of the title is a separate, compulsory fee, usually collected by your conveyancer as a disbursement. It is charged on a scale by property value. The calculator uses the Scale 1 fee for a transfer of whole for value, at the reduced rate for applications lodged electronically through the portal or Business Gateway — which is how virtually every conveyancer now submits. Those fees are £20, £40, £100, £150, £295 and £500 as the value rises through £80,000, £100,000, £200,000, £500,000 and £1 million. A postal application costs substantially more, so ask if your quote looks high.
The mortgage payment
The monthly payment is the standard repayment-mortgage formula:
payment = L × i ÷ (1 − (1 + i)−n)
where L is the amount borrowed, i is the annual rate divided by twelve, and n is the number of monthly payments. On £292,500 over 30 years at 4.5% that gives £1,482 a month.
The calculator also splits your first twelve payments into interest and capital, because they are not the same kind of cost. The interest is money spent; the capital repaid moves from your pocket into your equity. Early in a mortgage the split is heavily weighted towards interest, which is one of the least intuitive facts about home ownership and worth seeing in numbers.
The rate you enter is treated as fixed for the whole term, which it will not be. Almost everyone is on an initial deal of two to five years and then remortgages. Use the calculator to see the payment at your initial rate, and then run it again a couple of percentage points higher to see what a less friendly remortgage would feel like. That second number is the one worth being comfortable with.
First-year running costs, and where the defaults come from
- Council tax — £199 a month. The average Band D council tax set by local authorities in England for 2026-27 is £2,392 a year including all precepts (GOV.UK), which is £199 a month. Your actual bill depends on the band and the authority, so check the band for the specific property and put the real figure in.
- Gas and electricity — £155 a month. Ofgem's price cap for 1 July to 30 September 2026 works out at £1,862 a year for a typical dual-fuel household paying by direct debit (Ofgem). The cap is reset every three months and applies to England, Scotland and Wales, not Northern Ireland. A larger house than the typical one will cost more.
- Water, insurance and broadband — blank on purpose. These vary too much by region, property and provider for a default to be anything but misleading. Enter your own; until you do, the year-one total is understated and the calculator says so.
- Maintenance — 1% of the price a year. This is a widely used rule of thumb, not a published statistic, and we have labelled it as one. Some years you spend nothing; the year the boiler and the roof go, you spend five times it. On an older property, or one the survey flagged, raise it.
- Conveyancing, survey, lender fees, removals and furnishing. Starting estimates in the ranges our guide to the true cost of buying a home sets out. They are inputs, not claims — replace every one with a real quote as you get it.
What the answer is for
The headline figure is deliberately the one nobody calculates: everything year one costs except the deposit. Buyers who plan only for the deposit get ambushed and end up borrowing for the extras at the worst possible moment, on the worst possible terms. Buyers who treat the whole number as the target move in calm, and calm is worth a great deal when you are also unpacking forty boxes.
If you are a first-time buyer, run it twice: once as a first-time buyer and once as a home mover, and look at what the relief is worth. And read our first-time buyer guide for the Lifetime ISA bonus — 25% on up to £4,000 a year, up to £1,000 free, towards a first home worth up to £450,000 — because that is real money most people leave on the table.
We cannot tell you which mortgage to take, and we would not: that is a regulated recommendation and Buzz Money Ltd is not authorised to make one. What coaching does is the bit before that — working out what you can genuinely afford, what the whole cost looks like, and what you would do if the rate went up. Start with the free Financial Freedom Score, or the £1,500 Financial Plan if you want the whole picture written down.