WA Stamp Duty Calculator

How Stamp Duty Works in Western Australia

Transfer duty — almost everyone still calls it stamp duty — is a one-off state tax on the transfer of land, administered by RevenueWA. It is assessed on the higher of the purchase price or the unencumbered value of the land and anything built on it, so a house bought cheaply from a relative is still taxed at what it is actually worth.

Two things make WA simpler than the eastern states, and one makes it trickier. Simpler: there is a single rate scale rather than separate owner-occupier and investor scales, and the first home concession is a plain dollar threshold instead of a sliding formula. Trickier: the thresholds that matter most to a first home buyer were rewritten on 7 May 2026, and the date that decides which set you get is the date you signed the contract, not the date you settle.

One scale, not two

WA used to run a cheaper "residential rate" alongside the general rate. It closed to new transactions on 1 July 2022, and since then the general rate has applied to residential and commercial land alike. If you come across an older WA duty table with two columns, it is describing a scale you can no longer use.

Current WA Stamp Duty Rates (2026–27)

• $0 – $120,000: $1.90 per $100
• $120,001 – $150,000: $2,280 + $2.85 per $100 over $120,000
• $150,001 – $360,000: $3,135 + $3.80 per $100 over $150,000
• $360,001 – $725,000: $11,115 + $4.75 per $100 over $360,000
• Over $725,000: $28,453 + $5.15 per $100 over $725,000

The scale is marginal: only the slice of the price sitting inside each band is charged at that band's rate. RevenueWA's wording is "per $100 or part thereof", which means the amount above the threshold is rounded up to the next whole $100 before the rate is applied — worth a few dollars on an odd-numbered price, and nothing more.

A worked example

An $800,000 Perth home, bought by someone who has owned property before. It sits above the $725,000 line, so duty is $28,453 plus $5.15 per $100 of the $75,000 above it: $28,453 + $3,862.50 = $32,316. That is 4.0% of the price, and $832,316 once the duty is added.

Drop the price to $650,000 and the buyer is one band down: $11,115 + $4.75 per $100 of $290,000 = $24,890, or 3.8%. Duty is a cash cost at settlement rather than something most lenders will add to the loan, so it is worth modelling the deposit with the duty already taken out of it — the mortgage repayment calculator and the LMI calculator both work off whatever is left.

The first home owner rate, rebuilt on 7 May 2026

The 2026–27 state budget lifted the first home owner rate thresholds for the second time in fourteen months. For a transaction entered into on or after 7 May 2026, the first home owner rate is:

• Home: no duty up to $600,000, then $16.15 for every $100 above it, to a hard cap of $800,000.
• Vacant land: no duty up to $450,000, then $20.14 for every $100 above it, capped at $550,000.

Two things about that catch people out. The first is that $16.15 per $100 is an effective marginal rate of 16.15% — between $600,000 and $800,000, every extra $100 on the purchase price adds another $16.15 of duty, about three times the steepest general-rate band. The second is the cap. It is a cliff, not a taper: one dollar over $800,000 and the concession is gone entirely.

Because the phase-out is so steep, the two scales converge almost exactly at the cap. At $800,000 the first home owner rate charges $32,300 against a general rate of $32,316 — a concession worth $16. Effectively all of the value sits at the bottom of the range, where at $600,000 it is worth the full $22,515.

Unlike the grant, the first home owner rate is available on an established home. Eligibility otherwise tracks the First Home Owner Grant Act 2000, and you have 12 months from completion of the transaction to apply. The first home buyer calculator takes the grant, the duty concession and the deposit together.

What the same WA home costs two different buyers

The phase-out, band by band

Duty payable by an eligible first home buyer on a home, from the duty-free threshold to the cap. The line is straight — $16.15 per $100 the whole way — which is what makes negotiating across the $600,000 mark expensive.

If you signed before 7 May 2026

The thresholds apply from the date the agreement was entered into, not the date of settlement, so a contract signed in April 2026 and settling now is assessed on the older scale. Under the 21 March 2025 rules, first home buyers paid no duty to $500,000 and then $13.63 per $100 to a $700,000 cap in the Perth metropolitan and Peel regions, or $11.89 per $100 to a $750,000 cap in the rest of WA. Vacant land was free to $350,000 and capped at $450,000. The metropolitan-versus-regional split is gone from the current scale, which is now the same figure statewide.

Foreign transfer duty: 7%

A foreign person buying residential property in WA pays foreign transfer duty of 7% of the dutiable value, on top of ordinary duty, on transactions from 1 January 2019. On a $700,000 purchase that is a further $49,000, taking the bill from $27,265 to $76,265 — an effective 10.9%. First home concessions do not touch it. Every purchaser has to lodge a foreign transfer duty declaration, including purchasers who are not foreign persons; the foreign buyer surcharge calculator has the state-by-state comparison.

Buying off the plan

WA's off-the-plan duty concession is separate from everything above and is not limited to first home buyers. For contracts entered into between 12 March 2026 and 30 June 2028 on a single-tiered dwelling in a strata, community title or survey-strata scheme:

• Pre-construction (building had not started when you signed): 100% of the duty on purchases up to $800,000, tapering to 50% at $900,000 and above, capped at $50,000.
• Under construction: 75% up to $800,000, tapering to 37.5% at $900,000 and above, same $50,000 cap.

On a $750,000 pre-construction apartment that is the whole $29,741 back. It is claimed by application rather than applied automatically at settlement, and the calculator above does not model it.

The concessional rate — small, and easily missed

A separate two-band scale applies where the property is a principal place of residence or a WA business asset and the dutiable value is $200,000 or less: $1.50 per $100 up to $120,000, then $1,800 plus $4.04 per $100 above that. It is not large money — the gap peaks at $480 at exactly $120,000 and has shrunk to $3 by $200,000 — but at the bottom of the market it is real, and the calculator above returns the general rate.

The First Home Owner Grant

Separate again, and often confused with the duty concession: $10,000, paid on new homes only. Building, buying off the plan, or buying a home that has been substantially renovated and not lived in since all qualify; an established home does not, even though it can still attract the first home owner rate of duty. For transactions from 7 May 2026 the value cap is $800,000 south of the 26th parallel of south latitude — which takes in all of Perth — and $1,000,000 north of it. There is no income or assets test, and the grant caps are no longer tied to the duty thresholds.

When you actually pay

Duty is assessed once the transaction is lodged with RevenueWA, and payment falls due within one month of the assessment notice. In practice your settlement agent lodges it and pays it out of settlement funds, which means it has to be cash you already have. Duty is the one-off cost; the recurring one on anything you do not live in is land tax, assessed each year on unimproved land value — the WA land tax calculator covers that side of it.

Sources

• RevenueWA — Transfer duty assessment (general and concessional rates)
• RevenueWA — Duties fact sheet: first home owner rate
• RevenueWA — 2026–27 Housing Taxation Package
• RevenueWA — Changes to the first home owner rate of duty (21 March 2025)
• RevenueWA — Foreign transfer duty
• RevenueWA — Off-the-plan duty concession
• RevenueWA — About the first home owner grant

Frequently Asked Questions

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