Victorian Stamp Duty Changes — What's New

You've found a place you like in Melton. It's $615,000. The one you saw last week was $595,000 and you thought they were basically the same price.

They aren't. For a first home buyer in Victoria, those two houses are about thirty thousand dollars apart, not twenty.

That's because of where the stamp duty thresholds sit, and it catches people after they've already made an offer.

What you actually pay

If you're a first home buyer in Victoria buying a home to live in, you pay no stamp duty at all up to $600,000.

Between $600,000 and $750,000 there's a sliding concession. The duty phases in gradually rather than landing all at once, but it does land.

Above $750,000 the concession is gone and you pay the standard rate.

On a $650,000 purchase that concession is worth roughly $22,000. You'd pay somewhere around $12,000 instead of around $34,000.

Why the $600,000 line matters more than it looks

Most buyers set their budget on the purchase price and treat duty as a detail to sort out later.

But duty is cash. You can't borrow it. It has to be in your account at settlement alongside your deposit, your conveyancer, and everything else.

So a $20,000 jump in purchase price near that threshold doesn't cost you $20,000. It costs you $20,000 plus the duty you just triggered, and all of the extra has to come from savings rather than the loan.

If you're bidding near $600,000, know exactly what crossing it does to your cash position before auction day, not after.

You don't apply for it

This part reassures people. The first home buyer duty concession isn't a form you fill in and wait on.

Your conveyancer or solicitor claims it as part of the settlement paperwork. If you qualify, it's applied.

What you do need to do is qualify. You need to be a first home buyer, you need to be buying a home to live in rather than an investment, and you need to move in within twelve months and stay for at least a year.

The costs that aren't duty

Stamp duty is the biggest single cash cost after your deposit, but it isn't the only one, and the others are where budgets quietly fail.

• Conveyancer or solicitor, roughly $1,500 to $2,500
• Building and pest inspection, $500 to $800, and don't skip it to save money
• Loan application and valuation fees, a few hundred, sometimes waived
• Council and water rates adjustment, whatever the seller has prepaid
• Moving costs, and everything you'll need to buy in the first fortnight

Budget five to eight thousand on top of everything else you've calculated. If you don't need it, good. Running out of cash at settlement is a genuinely bad day.

What this means if you're buying in the west

Across Wyndham, Melton and the Hume corridor there's a lot of stock sitting either side of $600,000, which means this threshold shapes what you should be looking at.

It doesn't mean never go above it. Plenty of good buying happens between $600,000 and $750,000 and the concession is still doing work in that band.

It means know the number before you're standing on a nature strip with a paddle in your hand.

Run your own figure on the stamp duty calculator on this site. It's free and it shows its working.

Let's get you into a home.