First Home Buyer Duty Concession Calculator Australia

What the first home buyer duty concession calculator does

The first home buyer duty concession calculator shows how much transfer duty you would pay on a purchase, how much of it the concession removes, and how close your price is to the point where the relief runs out. It covers all eight states and territories, each using its own duty schedule and its own first-home price limits.

Stamp duty is usually the largest cash cost in a first purchase after the deposit, and it cannot be borrowed. Knowing the number before you bid is the difference between a comfortable settlement and a scramble.

How the concession is structured

Every jurisdiction builds its scheme the same way, even though the numbers differ enormously. There is a price below which an eligible first home buyer pays nothing at all. There is a higher price, the concession cap, above which the concession is gone and full duty applies. Between the two the relief tapers away.

The calculator models the taper as a straight line from nil duty at the exemption price to full duty at the cap. That is the same treatment used across the site, and it matches the shape of most state schemes closely enough for budgeting. It will not reproduce every jurisdiction's exact formula, because several use their own bespoke rate table inside the concession band.

Why the taper zone is expensive

The most useful figure the calculator produces is the extra duty triggered by paying ten thousand dollars more. Outside the concession band that is simply the marginal duty rate on ten thousand dollars, typically a few hundred dollars. Inside the band it is much larger, because the higher price raises the underlying duty and simultaneously shrinks the proportion being waived.

The practical consequence is that stretching your offer by a small amount near the top of the taper can cost several thousand dollars in duty alone. Buyers who understand where the boundary sits negotiate differently.

The headroom figure tells you how much room is left before the concession disappears entirely. When it is small, the price you can afford is effectively capped well below what your lender would approve.

Choosing the right price limits

Each state's seeded exemption price and concession cap are used by default and reported back so you can see exactly which figures produced the answer. But state schemes are not uniform: some apply different price limits to a newly built home than to an established one, some carve out vacant land on which you intend to build, and some restrict the concession to buyers who will live in the property for a minimum period.

Rather than guess at a table that would go stale, the calculator lets you override both the exemption price and the cap in the advanced inputs. Enter the figures from your own revenue office's current guidance and the taper recalculates around them. Leaving both at zero keeps the seeded state values.

What the results tell you

The headline figure is the duty payable after the concession. Beside it you get the duty you would have paid without the concession, the saving in dollars, the saving as a percentage of full duty, and the duty as a share of the purchase price.

Untick the first home buyer box and the same purchase is priced at full duty, which makes the value of eligibility obvious in one comparison. That is also the right setting if you have owned property before, have already used a concession, or are buying with a partner who has.

The advanced field for other upfront costs rolls conveyancing, inspections and registration fees into a single total upfront figure so the settlement cash requirement is visible in one number.

Budgeting around the concession

Duty has to be paid at or shortly after settlement, and lenders will not advance funds against it, so it comes out of the same savings pool as the deposit. A concession that removes twenty thousand dollars of duty effectively frees that amount for the deposit, which can lift the loan-to-value ratio enough to avoid lenders mortgage insurance as well.

That interaction is worth checking before you settle on a price. Running the same purchase at a price just under the exemption and again just over the cap usually shows a larger difference in total cash required than buyers expect, because the duty saving and the insurance premium move together.

Eligibility in outline

The common conditions across jurisdictions are that you have never held a relevant interest in residential property in Australia, that you have not previously received a first home benefit, that at least one buyer is a natural person rather than a company or trust, and that you occupy the property as your principal place of residence within a set period after settlement and stay for a minimum term.

Several states also impose residency or citizenship requirements, and buying with a partner who has owned before will usually disqualify the whole purchase rather than half of it. Foreign purchaser surcharges sit outside the concession entirely and are not modelled here.

Limits of the estimate

Duty is generally assessed on the greater of the purchase price and market value, so a discounted family transfer may attract more duty than the price suggests. Off-the-plan concessions, house and land packages, shared equity schemes, pensioner concessions and duty deferral arrangements all follow separate rules.

The figures also assume a single residential transfer with no foreign purchaser surcharge, no additional land holdings and no vacancy or absentee levy. Where any of those apply, treat the output as a floor rather than a final number.

Every duty schedule and price limit used here comes from the current state revenue office parameters rather than being written into the code, so the figures move when a state revises its scheme.

This is an estimate for planning purposes only, not legal or financial advice. Confirm the duty with your conveyancer or the relevant revenue office before you commit to a purchase.

About This Tool: First Home Buyer Duty

First home buyer duty: use this tool to get an instant, accurate estimate. The figures follow official guidance and every rate and threshold is kept up to date for 2026. Adjust the inputs above to match your situation, or browse all our calculators to plan your next step.