First-time buyers have saved more than £1bn of Stamp Duty since the exemption was introduced in November 2017.
The property tax is no longer levied on first-time buyers on purchases worth up to £300,000 and the latest HMRC data shows £1.1bn of the relief has now been used.
A fifth of residential transactions, 62,800, used the relief in the fourth quarter of 2019, worth a record high of £154m.
There have been 464,700 claims for the relief since November 2017, HMRC said.
It comes as HMRC Stamp Duty data shows the number of residential transactions liable for the tax in the fourth quarter of 2019 was 189,300, up slightly on the 188,900 a year before.
The number of additional property sales liable for the higher rate of Stamp Duty decreased by 1% annually to 59,600 in the fourth quarter of 2019.
This meant total Stamp Duty receipts fell slightly from £2.35bn to £2.32bn, of which 43% was for additional properties.
The figures also show the total number of liable transactions in 2019 was down 2.6% annually to 678,200, while receipts were down 2.9% to £8.2bn.
Commenting on the data, Andrew Montlake, managing director of mortgage broker Coreco, said: “For both Stamp Duty transaction numbers and receipts in the fourth quarter of last year to have come in at roughly the same level as 2018 underlines the resilience of the property market in the face of Brexit turbulence.
“There was certainly no surge in the fourth quarter but neither was there a collapse, and that’s proof of how many people wanted to get under a new roof before the sky potentially fell in.
“The rise in the number of transactions claiming first-time buyers’ relief bears witness to the urgency of many people to get on to the ladder before potential price rises in 2020, in the event of Brexit proving benign and the market rebounding.
“The Chancellor should go one step further in next month’s Budget and raise the 0% limit to £500,000 for first-time buyers.
“The signs so far in 2020 are that buyers are returning to the market so we expect stamp duty receipts to be up noticeably in the first quarter of 2020.”
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