Stamp duty calculator
The big upfront cost of buying a home. See what you'll pay in your state — and how much you'd save buying across the border.
Stamp duty in New South Wales
$30,187
That's 3.8% of the purchase price, payable upfront.
The same $800,000 home, every state
General owner-occupier transfer-duty rates, 2026-27 (QLD/ACT use their owner-occupier concessional scales). First-home-buyer relief is a simplified free-then-phase-out estimate that varies by state and property type — e.g. the ACT now exempts eligible first home buyers at any price, while SA, NT and (from 1 July 2026) Tasmanian established-home buyers get no duty relief. Excludes other fees. A guide, not advice.
Transfer duty — almost everyone still calls it stamp duty — is usually the biggest cash cost of buying a home after the deposit, and the one buyers most often under-budget for. It is charged by the state the property sits in, not the ATO, so the same price attracts very different bills either side of a border.
This page works out the duty on your purchase price, then runs that same price through all eight jurisdictions so you can see where yours lands. The first-home-buyer setting is where the gaps widen most: at one price a jurisdiction can charge an eligible buyer nothing while another charges the lot.
How this is calculated
- 1
Load your state's duty scale
Each state has its own bracket table. Inside a bracket, duty is a fixed base carried up from the bands below plus a marginal rate on the slice of your price sitting in that band. A few bands instead charge a flat percentage of the whole value, and the Northern Territory uses a formula below $525,000.
- 2
Find your band and apply it
The calculator finds your band, adds the base to the marginal rate on the excess, then divides by your price for the effective rate — what duty costs as a share of the purchase, always lower than the marginal rate on your next dollar.
- 3
Apply the first-home-buyer concession
Relief is modelled in three zones: no duty up to your state's free threshold, full duty at or above its concession ceiling, and a straight-line taper between them. States with no established-home relief return full duty; the ACT is modelled with no price cap, so an eligible buyer pays nothing at any price.
- 4
Run the same price through every state
Your price and first-home-buyer setting go through all eight scales, ranked cheapest to dearest. Holding the price constant isolates the duty difference itself — something a single-state calculator can't show.
- 5
Open the advanced panel
There you get the full bracket table, the marginal rate on your next dollar, and a chart of duty against price. The kinks in that curve are bracket thresholds; the markers show where a concession phases out.
What it assumes
- Owner-occupier scales for an established home. Queensland and the ACT use their concessional owner-occupier rates, so an investor there pays more than shown.
- First-home-buyer relief is simplified to a free threshold, a linear taper, then full duty. Real schemes attach eligibility tests and often taper differently.
- New builds, off-the-plan purchases and vacant land aren't modelled, though some states give relief on those where an established home gets none.
- Foreign buyer surcharges, pensioner concessions and family-farm or deceased-estate transfers are excluded.
- Duty only. Registration fees, conveyancing, inspections and lenders mortgage insurance sit on top.
- Thresholds move — Revenue NSW indexes its brackets each 1 July, and any state can change concessions at a budget. This is a current-year estimate, not a quote.
Common questions
Can I add stamp duty to my home loan?
Generally no. Lenders lend against the property, and duty is a cost of acquiring it rather than part of its value, so it comes from your own funds at settlement. That is why it eats into your deposit: money spent on duty isn't reducing your loan, pushing your loan-to-value ratio up and possibly triggering LMI.
Do first home buyers get the same deal everywhere?
Not remotely — it is the largest source of variation here. In the ACT an eligible first home buyer is modelled as paying nothing at any price; in New South Wales duty is free to $800,000 and tapers away by $1,000,000; South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory give no relief on an established home.
Why does duty jump so much for a slightly dearer home?
Duty is progressive, so crossing a bracket threshold lifts the rate on the dollars above it and the effective rate climbs with price. The sharper jumps come from concessions, not brackets: a dollar over a first-home-buyer ceiling can cost you the whole concession.
Is duty based on what I paid or what the place is worth?
States assess duty on the dutiable value — normally the contract price, but potentially market value where the two differ, as with a transfer between family members. This calculator treats what you enter as the dutiable value, so buying below market will understate the bill.
Sources: Revenue NSW — Transfer duty · SRO Victoria — Land transfer duty · Queensland Revenue Office — Transfer duty · RevenueWA · RevenueSA — Stamp duty · SRO Tasmania — Property transfer duty · ACT Revenue Office — Duties · NT Territory Revenue Office · All data sources
See also: First-home deposit & LMI · Mortgage repayments · Borrowing power · Rent vs buy
General information only, not financial advice. Figures are estimates based on the inputs and assumptions above and don't account for your personal circumstances. Confirm anything important with the relevant authority or a licensed adviser.