QLD First Home Buyer Stamp Duty Concessions

Stamp duty on a $700,000 Queensland home would normally run north of $17,000 — money that buys you nothing but a receipt.

Queensland's first home buyer concessions can wipe that out. Buy an established home under $710,000 as a first home buyer and your duty bill is zero. Buy or build a brand new home and it's zero with no price cap at all. Here's where the thresholds sit, how the taper works, and the live-in rules that decide whether you keep the discount.

For established homes, the first home concession makes duty free up to $710,000. Above that, the discount tapers, shrinking step by step until it runs out at $800,000.

At $710,000 you save the full amount — up to around $17,350 off the concessional home rate. At $750,000 you save a decent chunk. At $800,000 and beyond, you pay the same duty as any other owner-occupier.

One quirk: duty is charged on the higher of the price you paid and the market value. Buying below market from a generous relative doesn't shrink the bill.

For contracts signed from 1 May 2025, Queensland scrapped stamp duty entirely for first home buyers purchasing or building a new home — a new build, off the plan, a never-lived-in home, or a substantially renovated one.

There is no price cap. A $650,000 townhouse and a $1.4 million new build both attract zero duty, where the established-home concession runs out at $800,000.

Buying vacant land to build on? A separate first home vacant land concession makes duty free on land up to $350,000, tapering out at $500,000. All of this stacks with the $30,000 First Home Owner Grant if the home is under $750,000 — the duty exemption itself has no such ceiling.

The duty concession has one requirement tougher than almost any other scheme: you must never have owned residential property anywhere in the world. The grant only looks at Australian property; the duty concession's memory is global.

Beyond that: you must be an individual (not a company or trust) buying the whole home or your share of it, be at least 18 (exceptions exist), and move in within one year of settlement.

Buying with a partner who has owned property before? Only your share of the purchase can attract the concession — theirs is assessed at normal rates. Uneven ownership splits change the maths, so run the numbers before defaulting to 50-50.

The concession is for homes, not investments. Move in within 12 months of settlement, and don't sell or move out during the first year — do either and QRO claws back some or all of the duty saving, scaled to how early you left.

One string was recently loosened: you can rent out a spare room while you live there without losing the concession. What you can't do is lease the entire place and move out, or 'live there' in the sense of visiting occasionally. QRO checks.

Shopping established? Treat $710,000 and $800,000 as real lines on your search map — the duty bill jumps sharply between them. Open to building or buying new? The uncapped exemption plus the $30,000 grant makes new property much cheaper to acquire than sticker prices suggest.

Either way, know your duty bill before you fall in love with a listing. Our Stamp Duty Calculator gives you the number in seconds.