First Home Buyer Calculator

First Home Buyer Benefits by State (FY 2026–27)

Three benefits are in play — a duty concession, a cash grant and a federal deposit guarantee — and no two states run them the same way.

The three benefits stack — and three different agencies assess them

They do not offset each other. That is the common misreading.

The duty concession comes off your settlement figure: your conveyancer claims it and the revenue office assesses less duty. The grant is cash — same revenue office, separate application, and in practice it lands with your lender at settlement, or after the foundations are laid if you are building. The 5% Deposit Scheme changes what your lender will accept, not what you owe the state.

Stacking all three is normal. The catch is that they run different new-versus-established tests, so one house can qualify for one and fail the others. The rest of the cash you need on the day — conveyancing, transfer and lodgement fees — is on the settlement costs calculator.

Worked example — a $700,000 new home in Queensland

Standard transfer duty on $700,000 is $24,525. The Queensland first home (new home) concession takes that to $0, so the concession is worth the full $24,525. The grant adds $30,000 — the home is new and its value is under the $750,000 grant cap. Total state benefit: $54,525.

The federal scheme sits on top and changes nothing about the duty. At $700,000 the property is under Queensland's $1,000,000 capital-city and regional-centre cap, so a $35,000 deposit is enough and there is no lenders mortgage insurance. The identical house at $700,000 established still returns a $24,525 duty saving, but $0 grant.

Worked example — an $850,000 established home in NSW

Standard duty is $32,437. Under the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme the duty payable is $9,796.75 — a saving of $22,640.25. No grant, because the home is established.

The mechanic nobody publishes is that the concession tapers, not the duty. It is worth the full $30,187 at $800,000 and falls in a straight line to nil at $1,000,000. Each extra $10,000 of purchase price above $800,000 therefore costs about $1,509 in lost concession, on top of the duty on the extra itself — which is why the $800,000 mark is worth modelling carefully on the NSW stamp duty calculator before you bid.

The rules that decide whether you qualify

Contract date or settlement date?

Almost every duty concession is fixed by the date you sign, not the date you settle. NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia all test the contract — RevenueWA says its rates apply to the date an agreement is entered into, not the date of settlement. The ACT uses the transaction date, which for a purchase is contract exchange.

Tasmania was the exception that caught people out. Its exemption was tested at settlement and is unavailable for transactions settling after 30 June 2026, so contracts signed in May 2026 that settled in July got nothing — the Tasmanian stamp duty calculator has the current scale. Worth getting your state's rule before agreeing to a long settlement.

What “new home” actually means

Not a synonym for “recently built”. Broadly, a new home has never previously been occupied or sold as a place of residence — plus substantially renovated homes. A two-year-old house someone has lived in is established.

Then the divergences, which is where the money is. South Australia extends full duty relief to vacant land you build on. Queensland's new-home duty concession has no value cap at all, while its grant stops under $750,000 — the same purchase can clear one test and fail the other. The NT grant covers a permanently-fixed transportable home. And NSW and Victorian duty relief does not care whether the home is new; only their grants do.

Where eligibility actually breaks

Your partner's ownership history is your history. NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and WA all disqualify you if your spouse or domestic partner has owned residential property, even if they will not be on the title.

The ACT works differently. It is a five-year no-ownership rule on you and your domestic partner rather than a first-home rule, so it cuts both ways: a former owner can qualify after five years out of the market, and a genuine first home buyer partnered with a recent owner cannot.

Owning an investment property you never lived in disqualifies you in most states: the tests are written around holding an interest in residential property, not around having lived in one. And you have to actually move in — the window runs from six to twelve months depending on the scheme, and QRO states the Queensland one-year window cannot be extended.

Federal schemes

The Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme

Renamed from the Home Guarantee Scheme on 1 October 2025 and widened at the same time: no income caps, no waitlists and no place limits. You need a minimum 5% deposit — 2% for single parents and legal guardians — and the government guarantees the rest, so the lender does not charge lenders mortgage insurance. The guarantee removes the insurance, not the loan: you still borrow and repay the other 95%.

Eligible property is broad — new or existing houses, townhouses and apartments, house-and-land packages, off-the-plan, or vacant land with a building contract. You have 90 days from pre-approval to sign a contract of sale. What remains is the price cap, which depends on where you buy.

First Home Super Saver Scheme

Voluntary super contributions, released later for a deposit: $15,000 per financial year and $50,000 in total across all years, plus the associated earnings the ATO works out for you. Contributions are taxed at 15% going in, and the released amount is taxed at your marginal rate less a 30% tax offset — which is what makes the round trip worth doing for most people.

The trap is timing. You must request an FHSS determination before you sign a contract to buy or build.

What this calculator doesn't model

It assumes a straightforward purchase of an established or new home, and rounds results to the nearest dollar. It does not model the NSW, Victorian or South Australian vacant-land thresholds, which run on their own scales. Nor the NT House and Land Package Exemption — a full duty exemption, not means tested and with no value cap, for a house-and-land package bought from a building contractor in a single transaction, contracts dated 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2027 (see the NT stamp duty page). And the NSW and WA grant caps turn on a fact the calculator has no input for, so it applies the higher cap and names the lower one in the result.

Sources

• Revenue NSW — FHBAS and its FHBAS calculator
• SRO Victoria — First Home Owner Grant
• QRO — First home grant eligibility
• RevenueSA — First home buyer relief
• RevenueWA — First home owner grant
• SRO Tasmania — established homes duty relief and grant eligibility
• ACT Revenue Office — HBCS
• NT Government — HomeGrown Territory Grant
• Housing Australia — 5% Deposit Scheme and price caps
• ATO — First home super saver

Frequently Asked Questions

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