First home buyer stamp duty concessions by state in 2026

First home buyer stamp duty is the single biggest upfront cost most Australians will ever avoid — or fail to avoid — by a few thousand dollars of purchase price. Buy a $800,000 home in Sydney as a first home buyer and you pay nothing. Buy the same home for $850,000 and Revenue NSW wants $8,166.

That cliff edge is why this guide exists. Every state and territory runs its own scheme, the thresholds moved again in 2026, and two of the biggest changes — the ACT scrapping its price cap and Tasmania letting its exemption lapse — landed inside the last three months.

Before you go any further, it's worth running your actual numbers: the free stamp duty quote calculator applies the current NSW, Victorian and Queensland duty scales and the first home buyer toggle in about 30 seconds, and it shows the concession as a separate line so you can see exactly what the exemption is worth to you.

Last updated: September 2026.

Key takeaways

• First home buyers pay no stamp duty at all in the ACT from 1 July 2026, at any price and any income — the first Australian jurisdiction to remove both the property price cap and the income test.
• NSW is the most generous of the big three states by dollar value: a full exemption up to $800,000 saves an eligible buyer $30,412, with the concession tapering to nothing at $1,000,000.
• Victoria has the lowest threshold of any mainland state — full exemption only to $600,000, phasing out at $750,000 — but its $600,000 exemption is worth $31,070 because Victorian duty is steep.
• Queensland and South Australia pay nothing at any price on a brand-new home or vacant land; Queensland established homes are nil to $700,000 and phase out at $800,000.
• Tasmania's first home buyer exemption ended on 30 June 2026, so Tasmanian first home buyers settling from 1 July 2026 pay the full general rate.
• Stamp duty concession thresholds are based on dutiable value, not your deposit — going $1 over a threshold can cost you five figures.

What's in this guide

• First home buyer stamp duty thresholds by state in 2026
• What first home buyer stamp duty actually costs
• How each state's first home buyer stamp duty exemption works
• First home owner grant 2026 — the cash on top of the duty saving
• The traps that quietly cost buyers their concession
• How to use a stamp duty calculator as a first home buyer
• Frequently asked questions

First home buyer stamp duty thresholds by state in 2026 {#thresholds}

Every Australian state and territory offers first home buyers some form of stamp duty exemption or concession in 2026, except Tasmania and the Northern Territory. The table below is the short version — full exemption ceiling, where the concession runs out, and what type of property qualifies.

Methodology and disclosure: the threshold figures above come from the relevant state revenue offices as at September 2026 — Revenue NSW, the State Revenue Office Victoria, the Queensland Revenue Office, RevenueSA and the ACT Revenue Office. The dollar duty figures further down are generated by Leadkit's own stamp duty calculator, which we build and maintain — we're transparent about that. This is a price indication only. Your conveyancer or mortgage broker will confirm the final figure before settlement.

Want your own number rather than a table? Our stamp duty calculators separate base duty, concessions applied and total upfront costs, so you can see the exemption as its own line rather than a lump sum.

What first home buyer stamp duty actually costs {#what-it-costs}

An eligible first home buyer pays $0 duty on a $700,000 purchase in NSW and Queensland, $24,713 in Victoria, and $0 in the ACT, South Australia or on a new Queensland build. Same price, same buyer, four very different outcomes — that's what a state tax looks like.

Here's what our calculator returns across the three states it currently models, comparing an eligible first home buyer against an owner-occupier who isn't one.

Read the last row carefully. At $1,000,000 the first home buyer column and the ordinary owner-occupier column are identical in all three states — every concession has phased out completely.

The biggest single dollar saving on the table is Victoria's: $31,070 at exactly $600,000. The most durable is NSW's, which holds a full exemption all the way to $800,000 — worth $30,412 — and still returns $17,456 of relief at $900,000.

A quick note on terminology, because it matters when you're checking your own figures. Duty is charged on dutiable value — the purchase price or the market value, whichever is higher — not on what you borrow. And these scales are ad valorem, meaning the rate steps up in marginal brackets rather than applying one flat percentage to the whole price, which is why the duty on a $900,000 home is more than double the duty on a $600,000 one.

These figures are estimates generated through Leadkit's stamp duty calculator using the current NSW, Victorian and Queensland duty scales. This is a price indication only — your conveyancer confirms the assessed duty before settlement.

How each state's first home buyer stamp duty exemption works {#by-state}

New South Wales

NSW first home buyers pay no transfer duty on a home up to $800,000, with a concessional rate applying between $800,000 and $1,000,000. The scheme is the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme, and the current thresholds have been in place since 1 July 2023.

Vacant land is treated separately: nil duty up to $350,000, a concession between $350,000 and $450,000. At least one buyer must be an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and neither you nor your partner can have claimed the concession before.

The taper above $800,000 is unusually steep. Our calculator shows $8,166 payable at $850,000 and $27,872 at $950,000 — so if you're negotiating in that band, every $10,000 on the price adds roughly $2,000 of duty on top. If you want the underlying NSW rate brackets, we've broken them down in our guide to how stamp duty works in NSW.

Victoria

Victorian first home buyers pay no duty up to $600,000 and a sliding concession from $600,001 to $750,000. You have to move in — the exemption is tied to using the property as your principal place of residence, so investors are out.

Victoria's threshold is the lowest on the mainland, which stings in Melbourne. But because the Victorian duty scale is the steepest of the big three, the $600,000 exemption is worth more in dollars ($31,070) than the NSW exemption at the same price ($21,412).

There's also a separate off-the-plan duty concession for owner-occupiers, currently running until 20 October 2026, which cuts the dutiable value by the construction costs still outstanding at contract date. Buying a new apartment, that concession can matter more than the first home buyer one.

Queensland

Queensland first home buyers pay no transfer duty at all on a brand-new home or vacant land, at any purchase price, for contracts entered into from 1 May 2025. No cap. It's the most generous new-build treatment of any state alongside South Australia's.

Established homes use the first home concession instead: nil duty up to $700,000, phasing out at $800,000. The Queensland Revenue Office puts the maximum saving at $24,525, and our calculator agrees — that's the full home-concession duty on a $700,000 purchase.

The gap between the two paths is worth doing the maths on. At $800,000, an established Queensland home costs $21,850 in duty while a new build costs nothing.

Western Australia

WA first home buyers pay no duty up to $600,000, with a concessional rate to $800,000, for transactions entered into from 7 May 2026. That's a lift from the previous $500,000 / $700,000 thresholds announced in the 2026–27 state budget.

Vacant land moved too — nil to $450,000, concession to $550,000, up from $350,000 / $450,000. The budget package also cut the link between the First Home Owner Grant value cap and duty eligibility, so a WA buyer can now claim the duty concession even where the purchase exceeds the grant cap.

South Australia

Eligible South Australian first home buyers pay no stamp duty on a new home, off-the-plan apartment, house-and-land package or vacant land, with no property value cap, for contracts from 6 June 2024. SA was the first state to remove the cap entirely.

The catch is narrow eligibility: established homes get nothing. The separate established-home concession was abolished in June 2023, so a first home buyer purchasing an existing house in Adelaide pays the full general rate like any other buyer.

Tasmania

Tasmania no longer offers a first home buyer stamp duty exemption. The 100% exemption on established homes with a dutiable value up to $750,000 applied to transactions settling between 18 February 2024 and 30 June 2026 inclusive, and was not extended.

One detail caught a lot of Tasmanian buyers out on the way through: eligibility was determined by the settlement date, not the contract date. From 1 July 2026, eligible first home buyers of established homes pay the ordinary duty scale.

Australian Capital Territory

From 1 July 2026, eligible ACT first home buyers pay no conveyance duty regardless of the property price or their income — the first jurisdiction in Australia to go that far. The mechanism is the existing Home Buyer Concession Scheme, with the property price cap (previously $1,020,000) and the income threshold both removed.

Eligibility still has teeth. You must not have owned property in the last five years, and at least one buyer must live in the property as their principal residence for at least 12 months from settlement.

The same budget removed price caps from the ACT's Pensioner Duty Concession Scheme and Disability Duty Concession Scheme, and from the off-the-plan unit duty exemption.

Northern Territory

The NT has no first home buyer stamp duty concession. What it has instead is cash: the HomeGrown Territory grant pays $50,000 to first home buyers building or buying a new home, with no property value cap, for contracts entered into before 30 September 2026.

Eligible buyers of a qualifying house-and-land package can also access full duty relief through the Territory's House and Land Package Exemption, which currently runs to 30 June 2027.

First home owner grant 2026 — the cash on top of the duty saving {#grant}

The first home owner grant 2026 is a separate cash payment from the duty concession, and in most states you can claim both. It's generally restricted to new builds, off-the-plan purchases or substantially renovated homes.

Stack the two and the picture changes. A Queensland first home buyer purchasing a $750,000 new build pays $0 duty and collects $30,000 — against $19,600 of duty payable by a non-first-home owner-occupier at the same price. That's a $49,600 swing on the same house.

Grant amounts and caps move at every state budget, so confirm the current figure with the relevant revenue office before you sign anything.

The traps that quietly cost buyers their concession {#traps}

The most expensive mistakes first home buyers make on stamp duty aren't arithmetic errors — they're eligibility ones. Here are the five we see most often in the inputs people put into a stamp duty calculator.

1. Assuming the threshold applies to the price you negotiated. Duty is assessed on dutiable value: the contract price or the market value, whichever is higher. Buying from family under market value doesn't shrink the duty.

2. Missing the property-type distinction. In Queensland and South Australia the difference between "new" and "established" is the difference between nil duty and tens of thousands. In SA, an established home gets no first home relief at all.

3. Forgetting the residence requirement. Every scheme requires you to actually live there — 12 months in the ACT and Queensland, six months in South Australia, and similar rules elsewhere. Rent it out early and the revenue office can claw the concession back.

4. Ignoring the foreign purchaser surcharge. If any buyer on the contract is a foreign purchaser, an additional surcharge applies on top of ordinary duty — 9% in NSW, 8% in Victoria and Queensland. On a $900,000 Sydney purchase that's $81,000 nobody budgeted for.

5. Budgeting duty but not the rest of the settlement bill. Duty is the big one, but you'll also pay land transfer registration and mortgage registration fees (around $175 each in several states), plus conveyancing. Our guide to conveyancing fees in Australia covers that side of the ledger, and if you're under a 20% deposit you'll want to add lender's mortgage insurance to the same spreadsheet.

For context on how much of the market these thresholds actually cover: the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported the mean price of Australian residential dwellings at $1.1 million in the June quarter 2026, with the total value of the dwelling stock at $12.7 trillion. A $600,000 or $800,000 threshold is a genuinely binding constraint in Sydney and Melbourne, and a comfortable one in Adelaide, Hobart or Darwin.

How to use a stamp duty calculator as a first home buyer {#calculator}

A stamp duty calculator for first home buyers needs four inputs to be accurate: purchase price, state, whether you'll live in the property, and whether you're a first home buyer. Anything that asks for less than that is guessing.

Leadkit's stamp duty quote calculator — the one linked at the top of this guide — asks for exactly those, plus a foreign purchaser toggle and, in Queensland, whether the first home is established or a new build. It returns base transfer duty, the concession applied as a negative line, any foreign surcharge, total duty, and total upfront costs including registration fees.

Here's an honest word from building it: the input that causes the most wrong answers isn't the price, it's the interaction between the first home buyer toggle and the property type. A Queensland buyer who ticks "first home buyer" but leaves the type on "established" sees $21,850 on an $800,000 purchase. Switch it to "new home or vacant land" and the same purchase returns $0. Both numbers are right — they're just different purchases.

Two things a calculator can't do for you. It can't confirm eligibility — that's the revenue office's call, and your conveyancer's job to check. And it can't price a threshold you're about to cross in a negotiation, which is why it's worth running the number at your walk-away price as well as your offer.

If you're still working out what you can spend, the borrowing power calculator in the same library pairs well with this one: work out the ceiling, then check whether that ceiling sits above or below your state's duty threshold before you start inspecting.

Frequently asked questions {#faqs}

Q: Do first home buyers pay stamp duty in Australia in 2026?

A: In most cases, no — provided the purchase price sits under the relevant state threshold. First home buyers pay no stamp duty up to $800,000 in NSW, $600,000 in Victoria and WA, and $700,000 in Queensland for an established home. Queensland new builds, South Australian new builds and all eligible ACT purchases attract no duty at any price. The exceptions are Tasmania, where the exemption ended on 30 June 2026, and the Northern Territory, which offers a $50,000 grant instead of a duty concession. Check your own figure against your state's threshold before you make an offer, and confirm eligibility with the revenue office.

Q: What is the first home buyer stamp duty exemption threshold in each state?

A: Full exemption applies up to $800,000 in NSW, $600,000 in Victoria, $700,000 in Queensland for established homes, and $600,000 in WA from 7 May 2026. South Australia and Queensland remove the cap entirely for new homes and vacant land, and the ACT removed both its price cap and income test on 1 July 2026. Tasmania has no first home buyer exemption from 1 July 2026, and the Northern Territory has never had one. Vacant land runs on separate, lower thresholds in most states — $350,000 in NSW and $450,000 in WA.

Q: How much stamp duty will I pay at $850,000 as a first home buyer?

A: It depends entirely on your state. In NSW you'd pay roughly $8,166 — the concession is tapering but hasn't run out. In Victoria you'd pay the full $46,070, because Victorian relief stops at $750,000. In Queensland an established home at that price costs about $24,100, while a brand-new home costs nothing. In South Australia a new build costs nothing and an established home costs the full general rate. These are estimates from Leadkit's own calculator, not assessments — this is a price indication only, and your conveyancer confirms the assessed figure before settlement.

Q: Can I get the first home owner grant and the stamp duty concession at the same time?

A: Yes, in most states you can claim both, because they're separate schemes with separate applications. The grant is a cash payment aimed at new builds — $50,000 in the NT, $30,000 in Queensland, $20,000 in Tasmania, $15,000 in SA and $10,000 in NSW, Victoria and WA. The duty concession reduces or removes the tax on the transfer. A Queensland buyer purchasing a $750,000 new home can pay no duty and receive $30,000, which is why the new-build path is worth pricing even if you'd prefer an established home. The ACT pays no grant, having ceased FHOG payments in 2019.

Q: Does stamp duty apply to the land or the finished house when I build?

A: When you buy vacant land and build, duty is assessed on the land value only, not the finished house — the building contract is separate and isn't dutiable. That's why vacant land thresholds are lower: $350,000 for a full exemption in NSW, $450,000 in WA from 7 May 2026. Queensland and South Australia go further and charge no duty on first home vacant land at any value. Building is often the cheapest duty outcome available to a first home buyer, which is worth factoring into your borrowing capacity planning well before you're bidding at auction.

Q: What happens if I go over the stamp duty concession threshold by a small amount?

A: In most states you don't lose everything at once — you move onto a tapering concession. NSW phases out between $800,000 and $1,000,000, Victoria between $600,000 and $750,000, Queensland between $700,000 and $800,000, WA between $600,000 and $800,000. Going $5,000 over the full-exemption mark in NSW costs a few hundred dollars, not the whole benefit. But at the top of each taper the drop-off is real: an eligible NSW buyer saves $17,456 at $900,000 and nothing at all at $1,000,000, so that last $100,000 of price effectively costs $117,456.

Q: Do I pay stamp duty on my deposit or on the full purchase price?

A: On the full dutiable value — the purchase price or market value, whichever is higher — regardless of your deposit. A 5% deposit doesn't reduce duty; it just means you need the duty in cash on top of the deposit, because duty is payable at or near settlement and generally can't be capitalised into the loan. This is the bit that catches buyers using low-deposit schemes: you can clear the deposit hurdle and still be short at settlement. Work backwards from your total upfront cash, not from the deposit percentage.

Q: Are stamp duty concessions different for investors?

A: Yes, and the difference is large. Every first home buyer concession requires you to live in the property as your principal place of residence, for 12 months in the ACT and Queensland and six months in South Australia. Investors also miss out on the separate owner-occupier concessions that Victoria and Queensland apply to non-first-home buyers. In Queensland, an investor pays the general rate rather than the home concession — on a $700,000 purchase that's $24,525 instead of $17,350. If any buyer on the contract is a foreign purchaser, add a further 9% surcharge in NSW or 8% in Victoria and Queensland.

Final tips before you make an offer

Price your stamp duty before you price your offer, not after. The thresholds in this guide are cliff edges in a negotiation — knowing that $800,000 and $800,001 are $8,000 apart in NSW is a genuine advantage at an auction or in a private treaty back-and-forth.

Three things worth doing this week:

1. Run your target price and your walk-away price through the finance and property calculators so you know where the cliff sits for your state.
2. Confirm eligibility with the revenue office, not a blog — including ours. Every scheme has residence, citizenship and prior-ownership conditions, and they're assessed on your circumstances.
3. Budget the whole settlement bill, not just duty: registration fees, conveyancing, building and pest, and LMI if you're under a 20% deposit.

The rules changed three times in three states during 2026 alone, so if you're reading this more than a few months from the date above, check the current thresholds with your state revenue office before you commit.

Want an instant stamp duty estimate? The stamp duty quote calculator sits in Leadkit's free calculator library — takes 30 seconds, no signup. Remember it's a price indication only; your conveyancer or broker confirms the final figure before settlement.

Methodology: threshold, grant and scheme details in this guide are drawn from the relevant Australian state and territory revenue offices as at September 2026, and property value context from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Dollar duty figures are indicative estimates generated through Leadkit's stamp duty quote calculator, which applies the current NSW, Victorian and Queensland duty scales. Leadkit builds and owns that calculator — we're transparent about that, and it isn't neutral third-party data. Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice. This is a price indication only. Your conveyancer or mortgage broker will confirm the final figure after reviewing your circumstances.