How much stamp duty does a first home buyer pay in Victoria?

The short answer: if you're an eligible first home buyer in Victoria, you pay no stamp duty on a home with a dutiable value of $600,000 or less, and a reduced amount on a sliding scale between $600,000 and $750,000. Above $750,000, the first home concession no longer applies. It has to be your home — you move in within 12 months of settlement and live there for at least a year — and it works for both new and established properties. The exact saving depends on the price, so the number that really matters is your price measured against those two thresholds.

Meet Priya and Dan, again

When we last sat with Priya and Dan, they'd made peace with a hard decision: not to wait three years for a 20% deposit, but to buy sooner with 5% and the First Home Guarantee (now the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme), with Lenders' Mortgage Insurance waived. Priya is a nurse in Melbourne's west; Dan does IT support, in the city two days a week. Their first baby is now due in about six months, and their savings — around $68,000 — are finally pointed at a real search.

Two townhouses made their shortlist, out of a much longer list they'd filtered down first. One in Sunshine, listed at $599,000. One a few streets closer to Priya's hospital, in Seddon, at $650,000 — the shorter drive that matters when a night shift ends at eleven. Fifty-one thousand dollars apart, Dan figured. Then he ran both through Victoria's stamp duty rules, and found the Seddon townhouse cost them quite a bit more than fifty-one thousand.

Priya and Dan aren't real people — but their situation is. Every rule and number in this story is real and linked to its source below.

The $600,000 line

Victoria treats first home buyers generously, but it draws a sharp line at $600,000. At a dutiable value of $600,000 or less, an eligible first home buyer pays no land transfer duty at all — the full exemption. On the Sunshine townhouse at $599,000, Priya and Dan's stamp duty would be zero.

That is not a small mercy. For a non-first-home buyer, duty on a $599,000 home runs to well over twenty thousand dollars. The exemption hands that entire amount back to people buying their first place — which is exactly the cash a young family is shortest on. The current rules and thresholds live with the State Revenue Office Victoria.

The slope from $600,000 to $750,000

Cross $600,000 and the exemption doesn't vanish all at once — it becomes a concession on a sliding scale, tapering the whole way up to $750,000, where the first home concession runs out entirely. The closer the price sits to $750,000, the smaller the saving.

So the Seddon townhouse at $650,000 doesn't get the full waiver. It sits on the slope: eligible first home buyers pay a reduced duty there — less than a repeat buyer would — but no longer nothing. Because the concession is calculated on a scale rather than a flat number, the honest way to find the figure is to put your exact price into the SRO's land transfer duty calculator — it's the same tool the professionals use, and it costs nothing to check before you fall for a listing.

Why $650,000 isn't just $51,000 more than $599,000

This is the part that reframed the whole shortlist for Dan. Moving from the $599,000 home to the $650,000 one adds $51,000 to the price — but it also steps them off the exemption and onto the duty slope. The extra they'd hand over isn't only the higher price and the slightly bigger loan and deposit that follow it; it's the stamp duty that a sub-$600,000 home would have avoided completely.

Put plainly: the first dollar over $600,000 is the expensive one. It doesn't just cost a dollar — it switches on a duty bill that was zero a dollar earlier. For a first home buyer, the price tag and the true cash cost are not the same number once you're near that line, and the gap widens the further past $600,000 you go.

None of that makes the closer townhouse the wrong choice. A shorter drive home after a night shift is worth something real, especially with a newborn. It just means the choice is being made with the full number in view, not the sticker.

Do you actually qualify?

The exemption and concession aren't automatic — they attach to a set of conditions. The essentials, per the State Revenue Office and vic.gov.au:

• It must be your home. You need to move in within 12 months of settlement and live there continuously for at least 12 months — this is for owner-occupiers, not investors.
• You must be a genuine first home buyer — broadly, you and your partner haven't owned residential property in Australia before. The precise definition is on the SRO site.
• New or established both count. Unlike the First Home Owner Grant — a separate $10,000 payment that applies only to new homes up to $750,000 — the duty exemption and concession apply to an existing townhouse just as much as a brand-new one. That's why it works for Priya and Dan's established places, and the grant does not.
• It's a once-only benefit, and the value is assessed on the property, so a shared purchase is measured on the whole home, not your share.

Because these rules and thresholds do change, Priya and Dan check them at the source rather than trusting a forum post from two years ago — and so should you.

How it played out

The stamp duty didn't make the decision for them; it just told them the truth about the two numbers. The Sunshine townhouse: zero duty, more cash kept for the month the baby arrives, twelve more minutes in the car at the end of every shift. The Seddon townhouse: a real but reduced duty bill, a slightly larger loan, and Priya home fifteen minutes sooner on the nights that count.

The question that settled it wasn't "which is cheaper." It was quieter than that: in two years, which cost will we resent more — the money we spent to be closer, or the drive we kept to save it? When they could answer that honestly, the maths stopped being the hard part.

If you're like Priya and Dan

This is exactly the kind of thing Havenli surfaces before you're emotionally attached to a listing — that a $640,000 home quietly carries a stamp duty bill a $599,000 one doesn't, what a specific property would actually cost you in cash at settlement once duty, the concession and your deposit are all in, and which schemes you're likely to qualify for at that price. General guidance, with every figure linked to its source — and when a shortlist turns into an offer, Havenli helps you bring in a conveyancer and a broker. See how Havenli works, end to end, or start back at their deposit story.

This story is general information, not financial, legal or taxation advice — Priya and Dan aren't real people, their numbers are illustrative, and your circumstances will differ. Scheme rules, caps and duties change; always confirm the current details with the official sources linked above, and talk to a licensed professional for advice on your situation.