Australia First Home Costs Explained: Deposit, Duty, LMI and the State Thresholds

Price $700,000, deposit $70,000, loan $630,000. NSW first-home duty is nil to $800,000, so an eligible buyer pays $0 duty on this purchase — a saving of roughly $25,687 against the standard duty figure for a $700,000 property. LMI depends on your lender's quote: at an example rate of 2% of the loan, LMI is $12,600. Add $3,000 of other upfront costs (conveyancing, inspections, registration and adjustments are typical items, and the exact mix varies) and the total cash needed is $70,000 + $0 + $12,600 + $3,000 = $85,600. Change any one input — a 20% deposit removes LMI entirely, a price above $800,000 in NSW moves you into the concession band — and the total moves with it.

The LMI figure above is an example only, not a quote: LMI is set by the lender and insurer from your loan-to-value ratio, property type and loan size, and it can also be added to the loan rather than paid upfront. Enter your lender's actual quoted percentage in the calculator instead of the example.

NSW: nil duty to $800,000, concession to $1,000,000. Victoria: nil to $600,000, concession to $750,000. Queensland: nil to $700,000 for established homes, concession to $800,000, and no price cap for new homes. Western Australia: nil to $600,000, concession to $800,000 (from 7 May 2026). South Australia's relief applies to new homes and vacant land only — established homes pay standard duty. Tasmania's established-home exemption ended on 30 June 2026. The ACT offers a full concession to eligible buyers from 1 July 2026 with no price cap. The Northern Territory has no general duty concession; grants there are separate from duty.

Every scheme also has eligibility tests — citizenship or residency, prior ownership, property type and how long you must live in the home — and those tests are what most buyers get wrong, not the thresholds. A price inside a nil-duty band does not help if you fail an eligibility test, and a price above a band does not necessarily mean full duty if a concession applies. That is why our calculator asks you to enter the duty figure from your state revenue office rather than inventing a duty scale: the revenue office applies the full scale and the tapered concession correctly for your case.

First Home Owner Grants are payments, separate from duty relief, with their own state amounts, property-type rules and value limits — for example, new-home grants that do not apply to established homes. Do not add a grant to your budget until your state revenue office confirms you are eligible for it, and do not assume a grant and duty relief always arrive together. The safest order is: confirm eligibility, get the revenue-office duty figure, get the lender's LMI quote, then add up the total cash — in that order, with real figures, not headline thresholds.