Cost of buying a London flat as a non-resident

What buying a London flat really costs a non-resident in 2026

The asking price is not the final figure. On top of it the buyer pays a tax on the purchase (on the UK market it is called stamp duty), plus solicitors, searches and bank transfers, and then the yearly cost of ownership begins. For a non-resident, this tax alone on a £1m flat comes to between £63,750 and £113,750, depending on whether they own another home. Altogether that adds 6 to 15% to the price of the property, and that is before any mortgage. Below is the full breakdown: what you pay once at the deal, and what you pay every year.

Stamp duty: what it costs in cash

Stamp duty (in full, Stamp Duty Land Tax, or SDLT) is worked out in bands: each slice of the price is taxed at its own rate.

The base rates in 2026:

up to £125,000 — 0%
£125,001 – £250,000 — 2%
£250,001 – £925,000 — 5%
£925,001 – £1,500,000 — 10%
above £1,500,000 — 12%

A non-resident adds two surcharges to this base. The first is 2% on the whole price, because the buyer is not a UK tax resident (for SDLT, a resident is someone who has spent 183 days or more in the country in the 12 months before completion). The second is 5% on the whole price if this is an additional property: the buyer already owns a home anywhere in the world and is not replacing their only one. For most foreign investors a London flat is exactly that — an additional property — so both surcharges usually apply.

A worked example. A £1m flat, the buyer is a non-resident and already owns a home abroad. Working through the bands:

0% on the first £125,000 — £0
2% on the next £125,000 — £2,500
5% on the slice from £250,000 to £925,000 — £33,750
10% on the remaining £75,000 — £7,500

That base comes to £43,750. On top go the non-resident surcharge (2% of the whole price) — £20,000 — and the additional-property surcharge (5%) — £50,000. Total stamp duty is £113,750, and together with the price of the flat the buyer pays £1,113,750.

For other prices and statuses the maths looks like this:

Flat price	Base SDLT	Non-resident, only home (+2%)	Non-resident, additional home (+5% and +2%)	Total to pay: price + tax (additional home)
£600,000	£20,000	£32,000	£62,000	£662,000
£1,000,000	£43,750	£63,750	£113,750	£1,113,750
£2,000,000	£153,750	£193,750	£293,750	£2,293,750

The gap between an "only home" and an "additional home" on a £1m property is £50,000. This is the case for working out your purchase status with a solicitor in advance, not after the fact.

For a currency reference: £1m is about $1.34m and £2m about $2.7m (rounded rate, to be checked on the date of the deal).

Other costs at the purchase

Beyond the tax, a purchase carries a set of fixed fees. The exact amounts depend on the property, but the order of magnitude is:

Solicitor (conveyancing) — the legal side of the purchase: £1,500 – £3,000, higher for leasehold and for non-residents.
Property searches — £300 – £500.
Survey of the flat's condition — £400 – £1,500, depending on how detailed.
Land Registry fee — on a scale by price, up to £1,105.
Source-of-funds (AML) checks for a foreign buyer — some firms charge separately.
Transferring money from abroad — the bank's fee for the telegraphic transfer.

On a £1m flat these fees come to roughly £4,000 – £8,000. If the deal is financed, there is also a mortgage arrangement fee — around £1,000 – £2,000, or about 1% of the loan.

What has changed by 2026

Buying in has become dearer for a foreign purchaser over the past 2 years — not through the price of the property, but through taxes and rules.

The additional-property surcharge rose to 5% (from 31 October 2024; it used to be lower). From April 2025 the non-dom regime was abolished — under it wealthy foreigners paid UK tax only on their UK income. That narrowed the pool of top-end buyers and cooled prime central London, the most expensive part of the centre. A mansion tax was added: an annual charge on top of council tax for homes over £2m, which will mainly touch expensive areas such as Notting Hill and Hampstead (more on it below). And for anyone planning to let, the Renters' Rights Act has applied since 1 May 2026, changing the rules for landlords.

What ownership costs each year

The one-off costs are only half the picture. Every year a London flat needs its own budget:

Council tax — depends on the property's valuation band and the borough. Across boroughs the amounts differ several times over: in Westminster the rates are traditionally among the lowest in London, elsewhere higher.
Mansion tax — from April 2028 for homes over £2m: £2,500 to £7,500 a year across four value steps. Properties are valued in 2026.
Service charge — for leasehold, that is flats held for a term rather than owned outright. In new prime buildings with a concierge and amenities it reaches £5 – £15 per square foot a year.
Ground rent — a payment for the land under a leasehold, where it applies. Leasehold reform is phasing it down.
Tax on rental income, if the flat is let: a non-resident must register with the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme and pay on the rental profit.
On sale — capital gains tax for a non-resident (18% or 24% on the gain), plus the agent's fee.

Leasehold is worth keeping in mind separately: most London flats are sold this way, and in an expensive building the service charge over one year exceeds several years of council tax.

A mortgage for a non-resident

A mortgage is available to a non-resident in Britain, but on different terms than for a local buyer. The deposit usually starts at 25 – 30%, and for foreigners with no UK credit history it is often higher. Specialist lenders and private banks handle these deals.

The Bank of England is holding the base rate at 3.75% (a fifth meeting in a row with no change), and the average two-year fixed mortgage is around 5%. The rate on a specific deal and the minimum deposit are confirmed by a broker: they depend on the buyer's country, the currency of their income and the size of the loan.

How long the deal takes

From an accepted offer to the keys, a purchase in Britain usually takes 8 – 12 weeks. There is no notary in the British system — each side's solicitors run the deal. It becomes binding at exchange of contracts: after that the parties are committed and the buyer puts down a deposit of about 10%. Before exchange the deal can still fall through, including because another buyer outbids on price.

For a non-resident the timing tends to stretch to 12 – 16 weeks: source-of-funds checks and international transfers take longer. Leasehold properties take longer still — enquiries to the managing company are needed.

Who this entry is not for

The high tax at entry pays off over time in ownership, so London is a poor fit for a quick resale: to recover the stamp-duty surcharges alone, the property first has to rise in value. For the same reason the entry is hard for anyone who needs quick liquidity — in the summer of 2026 the capital sells more slowly than any region in the country, on average 73 days to a buyer, while the choice of homes is the widest since 2010.

If the aim is to hold for 5 years or more rather than resell, the picture is different: prime central London sits more than a quarter below its 2014 peak. That is an entry you count by the full cost, not by the asking price.

What buying a London flat really costs a non-resident in 2026

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