What buying in London costs an overseas buyer

London remains one of the world’s great stores of property value — but the United Kingdom now charges international buyers more to enter it than almost any comparable market. Before you weigh a London purchase, you should see the whole bill. Here it is.

Stamp duty is the number that decides

Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is paid by the buyer on completion, and for an overseas buyer it usually arrives with two surcharges on top of the standard rates. The standard residential bands are 0% on the first £125,000, 2% to £250,000, 5% to £925,000, 10% to £1.5 million and 12% above that.

Then the surcharges. If you already own a residential property anywhere in the world — including your home in Cyprus, Dubai or Moscow — a London purchase is an additional dwelling, and a 5% surcharge applies to the entire price. If you have spent fewer than 183 days in the UK in the twelve months before completion, you are a non-resident for SDLT and a further 2% applies, again to the entire price. The two stack: 7% on top of the standard bands, with a theoretical top rate of 19%.

For comparison, the all-in transaction costs on a Cyprus purchase typically run between 4% and 6% — we set that arithmetic out in our Cyprus costs guide on adens.cy. London’s entry cost is front-loaded, and it is the single strongest argument for treating a London purchase as a long hold rather than a trade.

The professional fees around the purchase

The rest of the buying bill is modest by comparison. Conveyancing on a prime purchase usually costs £2,500–£6,000 plus VAT, with searches and Land Registry fees adding several hundred pounds more. A building survey or valuation runs £1,000–£2,000. There is no estate-agent fee for the buyer — agents in England act for the seller — so the only advisory fee you pay is to a buying adviser you appoint yourself, and at exchange of contracts you commit a 10% deposit.

Leasehold: the London peculiarity to price in

Most central London flats are leasehold: you own the flat for the remaining term of a lease, not the building beneath it. Two consequences matter for your arithmetic. Service charges in amenity-rich buildings are substantial and recur every year — they must be read, line by line, before you offer. And lease length affects value directly: a lease running below roughly 80 years becomes progressively more expensive to extend, which is a negotiating point on the way in, not a surprise for later. Ground rents on new leases are now effectively abolished, but older leases keep the terms they were written with.

The taxes that follow the purchase

Owning and eventually selling carry their own charges, and an overseas owner should know all four. Rental income is taxed at the UK’s progressive rates of 20% to 45%, collected through the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme unless HMRC approves gross payment. A sale is subject to capital gains tax at 18% or 24% on residential gains, reported and paid within 60 days of completion. UK residential property sits within UK inheritance tax regardless of where the owner lives — at 40% above the allowances — a point we examine in our note on the 2025 reforms. And holding a home worth over £500,000 through a company triggers the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings, starting at £4,400 a year — corporate wrappers need genuine advice, not habit.

What this means in practice

None of this makes London a poor purchase — it makes London a deliberate one. The market’s depth, its legal certainty and its permanent international demand are real, and prime central London still trades below its 2014 peak in nominal terms, which is part of why serious capital keeps returning to it. But the entry taxes reward buyers who purchase once, purchase well and hold — and punish anyone who buys casually. That is precisely where disciplined, buyer-side advice earns its place.

London’s entry cost is front-loaded by design. The market rewards those who buy once, buy well and hold.

London is our home market: we advise on the acquisition from first search through to completion, accountable to you as the single point of trust throughout. If you are weighing a London purchase alongside a Cyprus one, a short conversation will put honest numbers on both — the cross-border case is set out on our Cyprus page. For a first estimate under your own parameters, our cost calculator applies the arithmetic above interactively.