Land Transfer Duty

As well as the First Home Owner Grant, we administer a variety of exemptions, concessions and reductions from land transfer duty (previously called stamp duty), which are helping people buy their own home.

Once again, thousands of Victorians made use of these exemptions and concessions to buy homes in Melbourne and across regional Victoria.

This included 8,147 pensioners, who made use of pensioner exemptions and concessions, bringing them more than $107 million in combined savings as they bought their own homes.

The principal place of residence (PPR) concession, available to all homebuyers buying a property valued up to $550,000 who move into the home within 12 months of settlement and live in it for a continuous period of at least 12 months, also proved a popular benefit.

Principal place of residence concessions 2017-18

  Number Value ($)
Metropolitan Melbourne 30,582 66,717,695
Regional Victoria 23,647 42,505,184
TOTAL 54,229 109,222,879

In 2017-18, the number of people benefiting from the first home buyer duty reduction increased as did their savings. This was the result of land transfer duty for first home buyers purchasing a home with a dutiable value of not more than $600,000 being abolished for contracts entered into from 1 July 2017. In addition, duty was phased in for eligible first-home buyers purchasing a home with a dutiable value between $600,001 and $750,000.

In the last five years, we have provided in excess of $1.238 billion in duty reduction savings to more than 131,300 first home buyers across the state. This includes more than one billion dollars in savings to 100,936 Melburnians and more than $204.6 million in savings to 30,414 regional Victorians.

First-home buyer duty reduction

Year Number Value ($millions)
Metropolitan Melbourne
2013-14 18,089 113.8
2014-15 18,539 143.9
2015-16 19,371 160.3
2016-17 18,758 159.8
2017-18 26,179 455.2
Regional Victoria
2013-14 4923 19.2
2014-15 5297 26.4
2015-16 5913 32.5
2016-17 5187 30.0
2017-18 9094 96.5