You bought your next home before your old one sold. Because you owned two properties at the end of completion day, HMRC charged the higher rates of Stamp Duty Land Tax, the ones with the 5% surcharge added to every band. Months later the old house finally completes, and you are left wondering whether that extra 5% is simply gone.
It is not. In this exact situation you can claim the surcharge back from HMRC, in full, for free, and usually get the money within a few weeks. Here is who qualifies, the deadlines that decide it, and how to claim it yourself in minutes.
The scenario: two homes overlapping
The surcharge is not about intent, it is about a headcount. If you own more than one residential property at the end of the day you complete, and you are not treated as replacing your main residence, the higher rates apply. So when a chain breaks, or you deliberately buy before you sell, you pay the additional-property rates on your new main home up front even though you are a home mover, not an investor.
The refund exists precisely for this case. Once the previous main residence sells, you have "replaced" your main residence after all, and HMRC gives the surcharge slice back. The standard SDLT stays paid; only the extra 5% comes back.
The conditions, straight from GOV.UK
GOV.UK sets out the test on its apply for a repayment of the higher rates page. To qualify:
The three-year rule
- The property you sold was your previous main residence, and the new property replaced it as your main home. A rental you happened to sell does not count.
- You sold the previous main home within 3 years of buying the new property.
- Neither you nor your spouse or civil partner still owns any part of the previous home. Keeping a share, or transferring it into a company you control, blocks the refund.
Exceptional circumstances beyond three years
If you bought the new home on or after 1 January 2017 and could not sell the old one within three years, you may still be able to claim, but only where the delay was caused by exceptional circumstances outside your control. GOV.UK's examples are government-imposed restrictions preventing the sale and action taken by a public authority preventing the sale. A slow market, a broken chain or ordinary conveyancing delays do not qualify, and once the exceptional reason ends you must sell as soon as you reasonably can before applying.
The claim deadline
The window is generous but hard-edged. For a previous main residence sold on or after 29 October 2018, HMRC must receive your claim by whichever is the later of:
- 12 months after the date you sold the previous main residence, or
- 12 months after the filing date of the SDLT return for your new home (the return is due 14 days after completion).
In practice, for almost everyone, that means 12 months from the day the old house sells. Diarise it the day the sale completes: a late claim is simply refused.
Worked example: a £400,000 main home at 2026 rates
Say you complete on a £400,000 house in 2026, intending it as your main home, but your old house has not sold. Using the additional-property bands from our stamp duty rates 2026 tables, you pay:
- 5% on the first £125,000 = £6,250
- 7% on £125,001 to £250,000 = £8,750
- 10% on £250,001 to £400,000 = £15,000
Total paid on completion: £30,000.
Had this been a straightforward replacement of your main residence, the standard rates would have applied instead: £0 on the first £125,000, £2,500 on the next slice at 2%, and £7,500 on the final £150,000 at 5%, a total of £10,000.
Sell the old home within three years and your refund is the difference: £20,000. That is exactly 5% of the purchase price, and it always will be, because the surcharge adds a flat 5 points to every band. You can sanity-check any price by running it through the stamp duty calculator with the surcharge toggled on and off; the gap between the two figures is your refund.
How to claim, and how long it takes
You claim directly from HMRC, online through your Government Gateway account or by post on form SDLT16. Either the main buyer or an agent with a signed letter of authority can apply. Have these to hand:
- The UTRN (unique transaction reference number) from the SDLT return for the new home
- The address of the new property and its effective date of purchase
- The address of the previous main residence, the sale completion date and the buyer's name
- The amount of SDLT paid and the refund you are claiming
- Your bank account number and sort code for the repayment
The online form takes ten to fifteen minutes. HMRC usually pays the refund directly into your bank account within 15 working days of receiving a complete claim.
Who does not qualify
The refund is only for the overlapping-homes scenario. It is not available if:
- You kept both properties. Buy a rental and keep your home, or keep the old house as a buy-to-let, and the surcharge is permanent. That is the policy working as intended; the extra 5% is part of the deal cost, as covered in our buy-to-let surcharge explained guide.
- A company made the purchase. Limited companies pay the higher rates on every residential purchase and there is no main-residence refund route.
- The old property was never your main residence, or you still own a share of it.
Beware the refund-agent cold call
If you have paid the surcharge, expect letters and calls from firms offering a "stamp duty review", typically for 30% to 40% of any refund plus VAT. For the main-residence refund they add nothing: the claim is free, quick and designed to be done without an adviser. Worse, some agents push speculative claims (uninhabitable-property arguments are a favourite) that HMRC later reverses, and it is you, not the agent, who repays the tax with interest and possible penalties. If a claim is genuinely yours, make it yourself on GOV.UK; if an agent invented it, be very sceptical.
None of this is tax advice, and edge cases (trusts, overseas homes, divorce) can change the answer, so check your own position with a conveyancer or tax adviser. But if you simply bought before you sold, the rule is happily simple: sell within three years, claim within twelve months, and the 5% comes back.
