Multiple dwellings relief is dead: MDR was abolished for SDLT transactions with an effective date (broadly completion, or earlier substantial performance) on or after 1 June 2024, ending the relief that let bulk buyers of flats and houses pay duty on the average price per dwelling rather than the aggregate. Anyone searching for it in 2026 is usually asking one of three live questions — does anything grandfather me in, what replaced it for portfolio purchases, and was my old claim safe — and all three have concrete answers.
What MDR was, and why it went
The relief computed SDLT on the mean price of the dwellings bought in one (or linked) transactions, multiplied back up — turning the progressive rate structure into something much gentler for bulk purchases. Two flats at £300,000 each taxed as two £300,000 purchases rather than one £600,000 one. It was meant to support investment in housing supply; what killed it was the retail abuse: claim farms persuading ordinary home buyers that a granny annexe or a bedroom with a kettle made their house "two dwellings", litigation HMRC kept winning, and an official evaluation finding little of the intended supply effect. Abolition was announced at Spring Budget 2024 with a short fuse — the only grandfathering covers contracts exchanged on or before 6 March 2024, subject to conditions — the contract must not have been varied, assigned or otherwise re-made after that date. That window still matters for long-running developments completing now: if your contract predates 7 March 2024, have the conditions checked before filing, because the relief can still apply.
What replaced it: the six-dwelling rule and the corporate map
Bulk purchasers did not lose everything — the structural reliefs survive, and they now do the work MDR used to:
- Six or more dwellings acquired in a single transaction are treated as non-residential property, so the commercial rate table applies — a top rate of 5% instead of residential rates stacking to 17%-plus with surcharges. The single-transaction requirement is strict: separate linked purchases do not qualify merely because the combined dwelling count reaches six, which is precisely why block trades are now structured to complete as one transaction rather than in staged tranches;
- Linked transaction rules survive in full and cut the other way: separate purchases between the same parties are aggregated for rate purposes, so splitting a deal does not lower the band — while still failing the six-dwelling test above;
- The corporate rates stand: companies buying single dwellings over £500,000 face the 17% flat rate unless a relief (genuine letting business, development, trading) applies, and the 5% additional-dwellings surcharge and 2% non-resident surcharge stack on residential-rate purchases — the full map is in our SDLT guide.
The practical arithmetic for investors: below six dwellings, each deal now prices at full residential rates with surcharges — the two-to-five-unit purchase is the genuine loser from abolition, and bundling six units into a single transaction has real money attached where the commercial facts allow it. From six up, run both computations on your actual numbers; the non-residential table usually wins, but "usually" is not "always".
The tail: old claims and reclaim touts
Abolition did not close HMRC's interest in claims already made — enquiry and discovery windows run for years, and the aggressive end of the reclaim industry left a long tail of annexe-based claims that fail the tests the tribunals actually applied (a genuine separate dwelling needs independent access, facilities and privacy — not a teenager's floor with a microwave). If a repayment agent secured you an MDR refund on your home in the boom years, the sensible move is a file review before HMRC's letter, not after: unwound claims come back with interest, and the agent's fee rarely does. Conversely, buyers who exchanged before 7 March 2024 and never claimed on completion may still be in time to amend — both directions are worth an hour of professional attention.
Where this leaves property buyers in 2026
SDLT on multiple purchases is now a structuring question with three levers — count (six or more?), linkage (one transaction or genuinely several?), and buyer identity (individual, company, resident status) — plus the perennial classification questions of mixed-use and genuine non-residential elements. None of it is exotic, all of it moves five-figure sums on ordinary portfolio deals, and every bit of it needs deciding before exchange, because SDLT positions are fixed by what completes, not by what could have been structured.
Acumon's SDLT team handles the structuring, the six-dwelling analysis and the legacy-claim reviews, with property tax planning covering the wider investor picture (and Scotland and Wales taxing under their own LBTT and LTT regimes — this page is England and Northern Ireland). If a multi-unit purchase is on your horizon, the SDLT conversation belongs at heads of terms; MDR's ghost is a reminder of how quickly the rules can move while a deal is in progress.