VIC stamp duty: how it's calculated and what you'll actually pay

Victoria has the steepest middle-bracket stamp duty in the country. Between $130,000 and $960,000 every extra dollar attracts 6%, which is why a $750,000 purchase in Melbourne costs roughly $40,000 in duty alone. NSW charges around $29,000 on the same price. Cross $960,000 and the maths changes shape entirely: the State Revenue Office switches off the marginal schedule and applies a flat 5.5% to the whole price, so a $960,001 purchase pays less than a $959,999 purchase. That is not a typo. It is the cliff most VIC buyers do not know about until their conveyancer flags it.

Here is how the 2026 schedule actually works.

The standard transfer-duty schedule

VIC transfer duty is marginal up to $960,000 and flat above it. Each band taxes only the slice of the price that falls inside it, until you hit the flat-rate zone. The current schedule for a standard residential transfer with no concession applied:

• Up to $25,000: 1.4% on the full price.
• $25,001 to $130,000: $350 plus 2.4% on the amount over $25,000.
• $130,001 to $960,000: $2,870 plus 6% on the amount over $130,000.
• $960,001 to $2,000,000: 5.5% flat on the whole price (no marginal calculation).
• Above $2,000,000: $110,000 plus 6.5% on the amount over $2,000,000.

The flat slab between $960k and $2M is what makes Victorian duty look so different to NSW or QLD. Everywhere else, the rate climbs in steps; in VIC it briefly inverts. A $959,999 purchase pays $2,870 plus 6% of $829,999, which is $52,670. A $960,000 purchase pays 5.5% of $960,000, which is $52,800. From there the flat rate runs all the way to $2M, where a top bracket kicks in for the genuinely expensive end of the market.

Most owner-occupiers and investors pay this schedule unchanged. Concessions narrow it for first-home buyers, pensioners, and off-the-plan purchasers, in that order of impact.

First-home buyer exemption and taper

Victoria's first-home concession is generous below $600,000 and unforgiving above $750,000. The shape:

• Full exemption (zero duty) on any property up to $600,000.
• Sliding concession from $600,001 to $750,000, tapering linearly to nil.
• No first-home concession at all from $750,001 upwards.

The $600k full-exemption ceiling has not moved since 2017, which means it has lost meaningful ground against the Melbourne median. A first-home buyer in Footscray, Reservoir, or Frankston routinely bumps into the taper rather than the full exemption, and the cliff at $750k is brutal: a first-home buyer paying $750,000 owes nothing extra on the last dollar, while a first-home buyer paying $750,001 loses the concession entirely and pays the full $40,070 of standard duty. Sellers who know this price their listings accordingly.

The exemption applies to both existing homes and new builds. You must move in within 12 months of settlement and stay for at least a continuous 12 months, or the SRO claws the concession back. Land and new homes both qualify provided the combined dutiable value sits inside the threshold, so a first-home buyer purchasing vacant land at $400,000 and then building a $250,000 home is fine; the same buyer signing a single house-and-land contract at $660,000 is on the taper.

The PPR concession (non-first-home owner-occupiers)

Victoria runs a separate principal-place-of-residence concession for owner-occupiers who are not first-home buyers, capped at contracts up to $550,000. It is a flat one-percentage-point haircut on the standard schedule for the first $130k of value, worth around $3,100 on a typical mid-$400ks purchase. Modest, but worth claiming. The PPR rule has no NSW equivalent, which is why downsizers comparing the two states sometimes find Victoria cheaper at the $400k to $500k regional band even though VIC's headline rate is higher.

Eligibility mirrors the first-home rules on residency: move in within 12 months, stay 12 continuous months. Investors and second- home buyers do not qualify.

Pensioner concession (brief)

Eligible cardholders get a full exemption to $330,000 and a sliding concession to $750,000, claimable once in a lifetime. It does not stack with the first-home concession on the same purchase, but a first-home buyer who is also a pensioner can pick whichever yields the larger saving. At $700,000 the first-home concession is usually deeper; under $400,000 the pensioner concession often wins. The SRO calculator on your settlement statement will show both options.

Two worked examples at the price points buyers actually hit

$750,000, owner-occupier, not a first-home buyer.On the standard schedule, duty equals $2,870 plus 6% of the $620k above $130k. That is $2,870 + $37,200, landing at $40,070. No PPR concession applies (the cap is $550k), no first-home concession, no off-the-plan reduction unless the contract pre-dates construction. This is the figure that makes Melbourne's family-home band so cash-intensive at settlement, and it is the reason borrowing-power calculators that ignore duty consistently overstate what buyers can actually afford.

$1,000,000, investor. Above the $960k inflection point the schedule flips to a flat 5.5% on the whole price. Duty equals 5.5% of $1,000,000, or $55,000. No PPR concession, no first-home concession, no off-the-plan reduction. Add the foreign-purchaser surcharge of 8% if the buyer is not an Australian citizen or PR. 8% of $1M is $80,000, taking total duty to $135,000 for a foreign investor at this price. An Australian- resident investor pays the $55,000 standalone.

Two things worth noting about the $1M example. First, the duty figure compares unfavourably with QLD ($38,025 plus 5.75% on the slice over $1M, roughly $38,025 at exactly $1M after concessions net out for an investor) and with NSW (around $40,000 at $1M). Victoria is the most expensive of the three at this price band, full stop. Second, the flat 5.5% slab makes price negotiation below $960k far more valuable than negotiation above it. Trimming $40,000 off a $1,000,000 contract saves $2,200 of duty. Trimming $40,000 off a $960,000 contract saves closer to $5,200, because you drop back into the marginal schedule on the way down.

Off-the-plan concession

Victoria offers a dutiable-value reduction for off-the-plan purchases that significantly cuts the stamp-duty bill on apartments and townhouses bought pre-construction. The concession works by subtracting the construction costs not yet incurred at the contract date from the dutiable value, so you pay duty on the land plus any work already completed, not on the finished-product price.

Since the 2024 reform, the off-the-plan concession is restricted to owner-occupiers (PPR or first-home) and capped at dutiable values that fall inside the first-home or PPR thresholds. Investors no longer qualify. The practical effect is that an off-the-plan apartment contracted at $800,000 with $500,000 of remaining construction costs is dutied as a $300,000 purchase. Apply the first-home exemption on top and the duty drops to zero, on what would otherwise be a $43,070 standard-schedule bill. This is the single largest stamp-duty saving available in Victoria, and it is why a meaningful share of first-home buyers in Melbourne now target off-the-plan stock in growth corridors rather than established homes.

Foreign-buyer surcharge and land tax

Foreign purchasers pay an additional 8% surcharge on residential property, raised from 7% in 2024. The surcharge applies on top of the standard transfer duty and concessions, calculated on the full purchase price rather than the post-concession amount. A foreign buyer at $1,000,000 pays $80,000 of surcharge in addition to the $55,000 of standard duty.

Land tax is a separate annual charge on investment property and holiday homes, with its own bracket schedule. Victoria's 2024 land-tax reforms lowered the tax-free threshold and added a flat surcharge band, so investors holding mid-value Melbourne stock pay materially more land tax in 2026 than they did in 2022. Plan land tax annually; plan stamp duty once at purchase.

How to use this on your specific contract

Articles like this one give you the structure. Your contract works in exact dollars, with cents on the duty line. Burbfinder's calculator is the fastest way to get the precise figure for your price, buyer type, and concession status:

1. Enter your target price and buyer type in the stamp duty calculator to get the post-concession duty for VIC.
2. Compare against the equivalent NSW figure using the NSW vs VIC comparison, or against QLD via the Queensland breakdown.
3. Carry the duty figure into your full upfront-cost stack with the buying cost calculator, which adds conveyancing, building and pest, and LMI on top of the deposit and duty.
4. First-home buyers should also check the first-home owner grant guide to see whether a $10k grant stacks on top of the exemption for new builds.

Stamp duty is the single largest one-off cost in a Victorian purchase after the deposit, and it is the most predictable. The SRO does not negotiate, but the bracket you land in is something you can shape at the contract stage. A small movement near the $600k, $750k, or $960k boundary can be worth significantly more than the headline price reduction once the duty saving compounds in.