Stamp duty is the biggest upfront cost most first home buyers forget to budget for — and the three biggest states treat first-timers completely differently. In one, the help runs all the way to a million dollars. In another, it stops dead at $750,000. We ran every figure below through the same open calculator that powers this site.
What a first home buyer actually saves
| Purchase price | NSW saving | VIC saving | QLD saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| $600,000 | $21,735 | $31,070 | $20,025 |
| $700,000 | $26,235 | $12,357 | $24,525 |
| $750,000 | $28,485 | $0 | $15,850 |
| $800,000 | $30,735 | $0 | $7,175 |
| $900,000 | $17,617 | $0 | $7,175 |
| $1,000,000 | $0 | $0 | $7,175 |
"Saving" is the standard transfer duty minus what a first home buyer pays at that price. Three states, three philosophies.
NSW: the most generous, all the way to $1M
New South Wales exempts first home buyers entirely up to $800,000, then tapers the concession up to $1,000,000. At $800,000 that's a $30,735 saving — the largest single-price break of the three states — and even at $900,000 a first home buyer still saves over $17,000. The help only fully disappears at a million dollars. NSW's design rewards buyers right up the price ladder.
VIC: generous early, then a wall at $750k
Victoria is the most generous of all below $600,000 — a full exemption there saves $31,070, more than NSW or QLD. But the concession tapers away by $750,000, and above that line a first home buyer pays exactly the same duty as an investor: nothing. Buy a $760,000 home in Melbourne and the state treats you like any other purchaser. Given Melbourne's median, that wall catches a lot of people.
QLD: the cliff that became a ramp
Until mid-2024, Queensland had the sharpest cliff in the country — full exemption to $500,000, then nothing. The 9 June 2024 reform replaced it: nil duty now runs to $700,000 (a $24,525 saving, matching QRO's own headline figure), phasing out to $800,000. And here's the quiet detail the other states don't match — because Queensland first home buyers are owner-occupiers, they keep the home concession rate above $800,000 too, saving a steady ~$7,175 even at a million dollars. Queensland also scrapped the price cap entirely for first home buyers of new homes from 1 May 2025.
The honest caveats
These figures are for the standard transfer-duty concession on an established home, for an owner-occupier who meets each state's eligibility rules (first home, residency period, value caps). They don't include the First Home Owner Grant (a separate cash grant with its own hard price caps — often the sharper "cliff"), and the other five states and territories run their own schemes — WA, SA, TAS, ACT and NT each differ, so use the calculator for those rather than the three-way table above. Every number here comes from the same engine as our calculators, verified against Revenue NSW and the Queensland Revenue Office in July 2026 — full method on the methodology page.