Northern Ireland has no council tax. Every home pays rates instead, set on a value Land & Property Services assigned to it for 1 January 2005 — and a cheaper new house can carry a higher bill than the one you're leaving.
Northern Ireland does not have council tax. Every home pays rates instead, made up of two parts: a regional rate set by the Northern Ireland Executive, the same across all 11 councils, and a district rate set separately by your own council. Both are charged as pence in the pound of your home's capital value, not as a flat band the way council tax works elsewhere in the UK.
For 2026/27 the domestic regional rate is 0.5559p in the pound, set in The Rates (Regional Rates) Order (Northern Ireland) 2026 — a 5% rise on the year before. Belfast City Council set its district rate for the same year at 0.4492p, a 4.48% increase agreed in February. Add the two together and a Belfast home's combined rate for 2026/27 is 1.0051p for every £1 of capital value. Move to a different council and the district half of that figure changes; the regional half does not.
Capital value is Land & Property Services' estimate of what your home would have sold for on the open market on 1 January 2005. Not today. Not the price you paid last year. 1 January 2005, whatever the house was like then and whatever it looks like now. LPS works this out from sale evidence around that date for similar properties, adjusted for size, condition and location — even for a house built years after 2005, where LPS builds a 2005-equivalent figure by comparison with homes that did exist and sell then.
Anything above £400,000 is capped. A home LPS values above that figure is billed as if it were worth exactly £400,000, so the bill stops rising at that point however high the real value runs.
Not the price on the estate agent's board. The capital value LPS has on file, which you can look up for free before you offer on anywhere.
LPS compares every home against 2005 sale evidence for similar properties. A bigger, better-specified bungalow built in 2010 can get a higher 2005-equivalent valuation than an older house worth less in 2005, even if today's price tag runs the other way.
No home is billed above this figure, however high its value runs today. It matters most at the top of the market, not on an ordinary downsize.
LPS's valuation list is free to search online by address. Look up the capital value of anywhere you're considering before you offer.
Anyone 70 or over who lives alone gets 20% off their rates bill under the Lone Pensioner Allowance. It is not means-tested, so income and savings make no difference to whether you qualify. Homeowners apply to Land & Property Services; tenants apply to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.
Living alone has exceptions built in. You can still qualify living with a carer who is not your spouse or partner, caring for someone living with you who is not your spouse or partner, living with someone under 18, or living with someone who has a severe mental impairment such as dementia.
Pension-age households on a low income can get help with rates through Housing Benefit and Rate Relief, assessed together in the same claim.
Working-age households on Universal Credit apply through the Rate Rebate scheme instead, which replaced the old working-age rates relief.
The Lone Pensioner Allowance stacks with these schemes. It does not replace them, so a widowed homeowner over 70 on a low income can claim both.
Marie is 71, widowed, and selling the five-bedroom house in east Belfast where she raised her family for £320,000. She's buying a two-bedroom bungalow five streets away for £230,000, built in 2009. Same council, same combined poundage of 1.0051p — the only thing that changes is each home's capital value.
LPS's capital value for the five-bedroom house is £140,000. At 1.0051p in the pound, the annual rates bill is £1,407.
The bungalow's capital value is £165,000 — higher, because LPS compares it against 2005 sale evidence for a smaller but newer, better-specified home. At the same poundage, the annual bill is £1,658.
£251 a year more in rates, on a bungalow that cost £90,000 less to buy.
Marie is over 70 and will live alone in the bungalow. The 20% discount cuts £1,658 to £1,326 — £81 a year less than the house she left, once she's claimed it.
A projection built on £90,000 released by the sale should carry the rates difference too: £251 a year worse before the Lone Pensioner Allowance is claimed, £81 a year better once it is. Over a 20-year retirement that is a swing of more than £6,600 around the headline saving, and the allowance has to be claimed separately — LPS does not apply it automatically.
LPS's valuation list is free to search online by address. Check it before you offer anywhere in Northern Ireland. The rates bill runs from that number, and the asking price has no bearing on it.
Each of the 11 councils sets its own district rate every spring. Add it to the 2026/27 regional rate of 0.5559p to get the combined poundage for that specific address.
The Lone Pensioner Allowance is not backdated automatically. Apply to LPS if you own the property, or to the Housing Executive if you rent, as soon as you turn 70 and qualify.
Sale price, minus the new purchase price, minus the rates difference, minus moving costs and fees. Run that net figure through the free projection and see what it does to the age your money runs out.
Northern Ireland has no property transaction tax of its own: a purchase here is taxed under Stamp Duty Land Tax, the same bands HMRC applies in England, and HMRC collects it — unlike Scotland's Land and Buildings Transaction Tax or Wales's Land Transaction Tax. Rates work differently. They are charged every year you own the home, not as a one-off on completion day. Where a house move, a pension decision and the State Pension are all landing in the same few years, the Financial Plan models them together. If your own spending figure is still a guess, the free Healthcheck works it out in about two minutes.
No. England and Scotland charge council tax, based on bands tied to a property's value at a fixed valuation date and multiplied by a figure your council sets. Northern Ireland charges rates, calculated directly as pence in the pound of your home's capital value, with no banding step in between. The result is a bill that moves smoothly with value instead of jumping between fixed bands, and two homes a few thousand pounds apart in capital value can have different bills, not identical ones the way two homes in the same council tax band would.
Because the rates bill is set by your home's capital value, not its price tag. Land & Property Services assigns every home a value based on what it would have sold for on the open market on 1 January 2005, built from comparable sale evidence from that time. A smaller, newer property can get a higher 2005-equivalent valuation than an older, bigger one that was cheaper in 2005's market, if LPS's comparables put it there. The only way to know before you buy is to look up the capital value on LPS's valuation list, not estimate it from today's asking price.
Land & Property Services publishes a free valuation list online, searchable by address, which shows the capital value and the domestic rates set for every rateable property in Northern Ireland. Look it up before you offer, not after you've exchanged. Add the current regional rate to the district rate your council has set for the year, multiply by the capital value, and that gives you the annual bill. A solicitor doing the conveyancing can also confirm the figure, but the list is public and free to check yourself first.
It is a 20% discount on rates for anyone 70 or over who lives alone, and it is not means-tested, so income and savings make no difference. It is not automatic. Homeowners apply to Land & Property Services and tenants apply to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, and the discount starts from the date the claim is approved, not from your 70th birthday if you apply later. You can still qualify living with a carer who is not your spouse or partner, someone under 18, or someone with a severe mental impairment such as dementia.
No. Scotland replaced stamp duty with Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in 2015, and Wales replaced it with Land Transaction Tax in 2018, each on its own bands collected by its own revenue authority. Northern Ireland never did this: a purchase here is taxed under Stamp Duty Land Tax, the same bands HMRC applies in England, and HMRC collects it. The rates system covered in this guide is the real difference, because it is charged every year you own the home and not as a one-off on completion day.
No. Financial planning is not regulated advice, and none of this is a recommendation to buy, sell or move house. We describe how rates and the Lone Pensioner Allowance work so a downsizing figure can be put into a projection accurately, not left as a guess. Where a decision needs a regulated recommendation, such as what to do with the money a sale releases, we say so and can introduce you to Equity & General, authorised and regulated by the FCA (No. 474163). The introduction is optional, and if you become their client, E&G pay Buzz a commission, which we disclose before the introduction. You can check any firm on the Financial Services Register at register.fca.org.uk.
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