First-time buyers in Scotland
Every mainstream calculator answers what a lender will lend. Below is the other question, worked through for a first-time buyer in Scotland: which of the three limits runs out first, what is still theirs each month once the payment goes out, and what changes when the fixed rate ends and they take a new one.
Two incomes, renting, no property to sell and no mortgage to carry across.
- Household income
- £76,000
- Take-home, combined
- £4,750 a month
- Living costs
- £2,200 a month
- Saving they intend to keep
- £400 a month
- Savings toward the deposit
- £45,000
- Maximum loan to value
- 90%
£363,800
£1,775 a month over 35 years at 5.49%
£2,114
45% of take-home, up from 37%, on a new deal at 7.00%
The limit they meet is their deposit — not the other two. At that price £225 a month is still theirs, with the £400 saving going out on top of it.
Cutting the saving would not raise this figure: their deposit limits the loan before the monthly payment does, so money freed up each month buys no more house — which means the saving is theirs to keep. That is the case a calculator built around a lender's maximum cannot show you, because it never asks what the saving was for.
Note what those two figures mean together: on a new deal at that rate the repayment rises by £339 a month while only £225 is spare, leaving them £114 a month short unless something else changes. The headline price is not wrong. It is just not the whole question.
Change these figures to yoursOpens the tool with this example loaded. The arithmetic runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in Scotland
LBTT · verified 13 August 2026
LBTT replaced Stamp Duty Land Tax in Scotland in 2015. It is set at Holyrood rather than Westminster, so it moves at the Scottish Budget in December or January rather than at the UK one.
On the £363,800 above, the tax is £9,130 — and it comes out of the same cash as the deposit rather than being borrowed, which is why it lowers the price this household can reach rather than simply being a bill at the end.
- up to £175,0000%
- up to £250,0002%
- up to £325,0005%
- up to £750,00010%
- above that12%
The relief here has no upper cap, so it does not have the cliff edge England's does. It raises the nil-rate band to £175,000 and applies whatever the price, which makes it worth a fixed amount rather than something that can vanish at a threshold.
The same household, priced elsewhere
Identical income, identical savings, identical monthly costs — only the region changes. The gap is the tax regime, and for a first-time buyer it is worth this much:
- Scotland£363,800this page
- England & Northern Ireland£380,000£16,200 more
- Wales£346,900£16,900 less
Rates from the Bank of England quoted household interest rates, two-year fixed, as at 31 July 2026. Purchase tax verified 13 August 2026.
Other situations in Scotland
This describes what happens to one illustrative set of figures. It is not advice, not a personal recommendation and not a mortgage illustration. A lender will run its own affordability assessment and may lend more or less than the figure above.
Work it out with your own figures