Stamp duty in NSW vs VIC: which state actually costs you less?

Ask any buyer's agent which state taxes property purchases harder and you'll get a confident answer. Half of them are wrong, and the other half are right for the wrong price band. Stamp duty in NSW and VIC follows different curves, and the cheaper state flips at least three times between $600,000 and $1.5 million.

Here is the comparison without the marketing gloss.

The headline numbers at $750,000

Take a $750,000 purchase, not a first-home buyer, owner-occupier or investor. In NSW the transfer duty lands around $29,000. In VIC the same purchase costs roughly $40,000. That is an $11,000 swing on the same price tag, and it is entirely a function of where you signed the contract.

For a first-home buyer the picture inverts above $700k. NSW gives a full exemption to $800,000 and a sliding concession to $1 million. VIC's first-home exemption stops at $600,000 and tapers out completely by $750,000. So at a $750k first-home purchase, NSW is $0 and VIC is around $40,000. At a $900k first-home purchase, NSW is roughly $10,000 (still on the slide) and VIC is the full $48,000-ish.

Where does NSW become more expensive than VIC?

VIC's top marginal rate (6.5%) is harsher than NSW's (5.5%) once you cross into the upper brackets. The crossover for a non-first-home buyer sits somewhere north of $1.5 million, and widens fast above $2 million. Beach houses, inner-east Melbourne terraces, and harbour-view Sydney apartments all live in the band where the answer depends on which side of the price ladder you're standing on.

Plug your actual price into the stamp duty calculator. Both states are modelled with their current 2026 brackets, and the calculator carries a verified-on date so you can see when rates last changed.

The three break-even points worth knowing

These are the price points where the cheaper state flips. None of them are intuitive.

• $600,000.Below this, VIC's first-home exemption gives a full $0 outcome. NSW exempts to $800k, so for a first-home buyer NSW is also $0. Tie. For a non-first-home buyer, NSW is meaningfully cheaper.
• $750,000. VIC first-home concession has fully tapered out. NSW first-home exemption is still in full effect. NSW wins by tens of thousands.
• $1,000,000.NSW first-home concession ends. From $1M up, both states charge first-home buyers full duty. VIC's headline rate is still a touch higher, but the gap narrows year by year as both governments tinker.
• $1,500,000+.VIC's top brackets bite hard. For investors and upgraders, the NSW-VIC gap is consistently in NSW's favour at this end, often by $20,000 or more.

Foreign-buyer surcharges (which the calculator doesn't model)

If you're a foreign purchaser, both states apply an additional surcharge on top of the standard duty. NSW currently charges 8% and VIC also charges 8% (raised from 7% in 2024). On a $1 million purchase that is an extra $80,000 either way, payable on top of the regular transfer duty.

The platform's stamp-duty calculator deliberately excludes foreign-buyer surcharges. Most users aren't foreign purchasers, and the surcharge rules carry edge cases (PR holders, certain visa classes, trust structures) that need a tax adviser, not a web tool. If you're affected, treat the calculator's output as a floor.

Concession scope: a quiet difference

NSW's first-home concession applies to existing homes within the price thresholds. Buy a $780,000 1970s townhouse in Penrith and you pay nothing. VIC's first-home buyer exemption is similarly property-agnostic, but VIC also runs a separate principal-place-of residence (PPR) concession for non-first-home owner-occupiers up to $550k. That second concession has no real NSW equivalent.

For most buyers in either state the first-home rules dominate. For downsizers buying in the $400k to $550k band in regional Victoria, the PPR concession is worth checking.

How to use this on your specific purchase

Articles like this one work in averages. Your contract works in exact dollars. Run yours both ways:

1. Open the stamp duty calculator and enter the price, state, and buyer type.
2. Toggle between NSW and VIC at the same price to see the gap on your specific number.
3. Feed the duty figure into the mortgage calculator as part of your upfront costs, alongside the deposit.

If you're still narrowing down where to buy, the suburb-shortlisting framework pairs well with this. Stamp duty is just the entry tax; the suburb is what you're actually buying. And for the broader cost-of-purchase walkthrough (deposit, LMI, conveyancing, the whole stack), the first-home buyer guide covers the rest of the line items.

The state with the cheaper stamp duty isn't always the state with the cheaper outcome. Land tax, council rates, and rental yields all differ. But on the day of settlement, the duty cheque is the one that hurts most, and it's the one most easily modelled in advance.