Upon buying my new house, I was pretty much clueless when it came to the legal side of property so I had to ask my partner if we could avoid stamp duty. He explained that we were exempt from it this time round for two reasons:

1 – The purchase price of the house was under 125,000. Apparently anyone that buys a house under 125k don’t have to pay Stamp Duty Land Tax.

2 – We were first time buyers. This meant that we could buy a house up to 250k and still not pay a penny on Stamp Duty Land Tax.

This baffled me a little bit. Who on earth has enough money as a first time buyer to buy a house worth a quarter of a million pounds? With the average age of leaving home creeping up, and many people only ever spending their lives renting, you have to wonder if the funds would come from the bank of mum and dad.