I have watched more first home buyer deals wobble in the last fortnight over stamp duty than over the loan itself. People save for two years, hit their deposit number, get the pre-approval, and then discover a transaction cost they never modelled sitting between them and the keys. Stamp duty (transfer duty, if your state has rebadged it) is the single biggest cheque you write after the deposit, and unlike the deposit, no lender will fund it. It is cash out of your pocket on settlement day. On a mid-priced established home in a state with no concession, it can run past $30,000 and quietly eat the buffer you were counting on. The good news for first home buyers in FY2026-27 is that every state gives you a break, some of them a big one, and with Sydney and Melbourne prices falling those concessions are worth more this winter than they were last spring. The catch is that the relief is stitched to price thresholds, and if your purchase creeps a dollar over the line the saving can evaporate. So you need the exact number before you set your deposit, not after.
What stamp duty actually is, and why it is the tax nobody budgets for
Stamp duty is a state tax on the transfer of property, calculated on the purchase price (or the property's value, whichever is higher). It is not a fee your bank can roll into the loan the way it does with lenders mortgage insurance. It is due, in full, on or before settlement, alongside your conveyancing and your deposit shortfall. That is why it is the tax nobody budgets for: the deposit dominates every savings conversation, the loan dominates every broker conversation, and duty sits in the blind spot until a conveyancer emails the settlement statement. Duty scales with price, so it hits hardest exactly where prices are highest, which is precisely where first home buyers are already stretched. The first home buyer concessions exist to blunt that, and they are the reason two identical buyers on the same salary can walk away with a $25,000 difference in cash-to-complete depending purely on which side of a threshold their purchase falls.
Why a falling market makes the concession worth more
Here is the part most coverage misses. Cotality's June index has Sydney down 3.2 per cent over the June quarter and Melbourne down 2.6, with auction clearance in the low 40s. Softer prices do not just lower your deposit; they can drop a purchase back under a concession threshold that was out of reach a year ago. A Sydney or Melbourne first home buyer who was priced just above the full-exemption band in early 2025 may now find a comparable place sitting inside it. When that happens the concession is not a few thousand dollars of relief, it is the difference between paying full duty and paying nothing. So in a correcting market the threshold is a live target, and it is worth running the numbers on properties you would have written off twelve months ago.
The state-by-state shape of first home buyer relief
Two states are worth calling out by name because the relief is unusually clean. The ACT abolished stamp duty entirely for eligible first home buyers from 1 July 2026: no duty, no threshold cliff, subject to the income and eligibility tests the territory applies. That is genuinely the strongest first home buyer duty deal in the country right now. I will be honest about the trade-off, though, because it matters: universal buyer subsidies have a habit of showing up in prices within a couple of years. When every eligible buyer in a market suddenly has an extra $20,000-odd of purchasing power that used to go to the government, sellers tend to capture some of it. That does not make the ACT change bad, it makes it something to move on relatively early rather than assume it stays a pure windfall forever.
Western Australia is the other standout, and its structure is easy to hold in your head: no duty on an established home up to $600,000, a concessional (tapering) rate between $600,000 and $800,000, and nothing on vacant land up to $450,000. For a first home buyer purchasing at, say, $580,000 in Perth, that is a full waiver on a cheque that would otherwise be well into five figures. Perth is still the national price outlier, up 23.9 per cent for the year, so those thresholds bite sooner than they used to; check where your target sits against the $600,000 and $800,000 lines before you fall in love with a listing.
NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory all run the same broad shape for first home buyers: a full-exemption band up to one price, then a phase-out (concessional) band where the discount tapers to zero at a higher price, mostly aimed at new builds or lower-priced established homes. The exact thresholds differ by state and get adjusted, sometimes at budget time, sometimes mid-year, so I am deliberately not quoting a precise figure that may have moved since the last update. What does not change is the mechanism: find the full-exemption ceiling for your state, and if your purchase is above it, find where the taper ends, because a purchase just over the exemption line still gets a partial discount, while a purchase over the taper line gets nothing at all. That cliff is where buyers get hurt.
Get your exact number from your own state's calculator, not from a mate who bought two years ago in a different state. We keep a first home buyer stamp duty calculator for every state and territory, all linked in the tools row below this article, and each one applies the current concession for that jurisdiction so you see the real cheque, not a national average.
- New South Wales: full exemption up to a set price, then a phase-out band above it, targeted at first home buyers. Run the NSW stamp duty calculator in the tools row below for the live figure, and check whether your purchase clears the exemption ceiling.
- Victoria: a first home buyer exemption band and a tapering concession above it, with extra rules for off-the-plan purchases. Check the Victorian calculator before you set your deposit.
- Queensland: a first home concession with a full-exemption band and a phase-out, plus a separate vacant-land concession. Run the Queensland calculator for your price point.
- South Australia: first home buyer relief that has been expanded in recent years, especially for new homes. Confirm the current position on the South Australian calculator.
- Western Australia: no duty to $600,000, a concessional rate to $800,000, and nothing on vacant land to $450,000. Model it on the WA calculator.
- Tasmania: a first home buyer concession on established homes within a price band, tapering above it. Run the Tasmanian calculator for the exact number.
- Australian Capital Territory: stamp duty abolished for eligible first home buyers from 1 July 2026, subject to eligibility tests. Confirm your position on the ACT calculator.
- Northern Territory: a first home concession structure with its own thresholds; check the Northern Territory calculator for the current figure.
A worked illustration: what the concession can save
Treat this as an estimate to show the shape of the saving, then run your own state's calculator for the real number. Take a first home buyer purchasing an established home at $580,000. In a state with no first home concession, general transfer duty on a purchase around that price commonly lands somewhere in the low-to-mid $20,000s, call it roughly $21,000 to $23,000 depending on the jurisdiction's rate scale. In Western Australia, that same $580,000 established home sits under the $600,000 line, so the first home buyer duty is zero. That is more than $20,000 that stays in your account, which on a 5 per cent deposit purchase is a meaningful chunk of the deposit itself. Now push the price to $620,000 in WA and you are into the concessional band between $600,000 and $800,000: still a discount, but no longer a full waiver, and every dollar of price above $600,000 chips into the relief. That is why $40,000 of extra purchase price can cost you far more than $40,000 once the duty concession starts unwinding. The concession is not a flat rebate; it is a threshold game.
The honest trade-offs and the traps
The concession is real money, but it comes with edges you need to walk in knowing.
- The threshold cliff. Most concessions taper, but the taper ends somewhere. Buy a dollar over the taper line and you pay full duty on the whole price, not just the excess. In a negotiation, that makes the difference between an offer that sits at $799,000 and one at $801,000 far bigger than $2,000.
- New versus established. Several states weight their most generous first home relief toward new builds or off-the-plan purchases, and off-the-plan concessions can reduce the dutiable value based on the construction stage at contract. That can be worth a lot, but it ties you to settlement timing and building risk, so it is a genuine trade-off, not free money.
- Foreign buyer surcharges. If any purchaser on the contract is a foreign person, most states add a foreign purchaser surcharge on top of ordinary duty, and it is steep. It applies per the rules of the state you are buying in, and it can swamp any first home concession, so get advice early if residency or visa status is in question.
- Eligibility is not automatic. Concessions carry residence requirements (you usually must move in within a set period and live there for a minimum term), prior-ownership tests, and sometimes income caps. Break the residence rule and the state can claw the concession back with interest.
What you should actually do
Get the exact duty figure from your state's calculator before you set your deposit, not after you have signed a contract. Your real cash-to-complete number is duty plus lenders mortgage insurance plus conveyancing and searches, and if you build your budget off the deposit alone you will be short on settlement day. So do this in order. First, price the target property in your state's calculator (linked in the tools row below, either the all-states hub or your state's own page) and note whether it sits inside the full-exemption band, in the taper, or above it. Second, if you are within striking distance of an exemption ceiling, treat that threshold as a hard line in your buying brief, because in a falling Sydney or Melbourne market a slightly lower purchase can flip you from paying full duty to paying none. Third, run the borrowing power calculator on the numbers that remain after duty, so your pre-approval reflects the cash you will actually have. And if you are a first home buyer weighing schemes as well, the duty concession stacks with things like the First Home Guarantee's 5 per cent deposit and waived LMI, which is where the maths on entering a soft market gets genuinely attractive. Do the calculator work first; fall in love with the property second.
Disclosure: Your Finance Guide partners with Australian Lending and Investment Centre (ALG) ACL 505575 for broker matching, and ALG receives lender commissions on settled loans. Note that stamp duty is a state tax we cannot reduce and a broker earns nothing on it; we flag it because the buyers who model duty, LMI and conveyancing upfront are the ones whose settlements do not fall over. Duty thresholds and concessions are set by each state and change without much notice, so treat the figures here as directional and confirm the current number on your state's calculator or revenue office before you commit.