Buying costs are part legislated and part quoted. This separates them: duty computed exactly, professional fees shown as the range you actually face.
No typical figure is supplied for the quoted part, because published averages for conveyancing and inspections are survey data rather than a rule.
Brackets the cost of completing a purchase: transfer duty exactly from the statutory scale, and the professional fees you have been quoted as a low-to-high range.
Which set applies depends on the jurisdiction and the date you enter. Sources last checked 2026-08-30.
Australian Capital Territory — Transfer duty (stamp duty)
1 July 2026 onwards
Taxation Administration (Amounts Payable—Duty) Determination 2026 (DI2026-155)
New South Wales — Transfer duty (stamp duty)
1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027
How to calculate transfer duty — current thresholds and rates
Northern Territory — Transfer duty (stamp duty)
1 July 2025 onwards
Queensland — Transfer duty (stamp duty)
1 July 2024 onwards
Tasmania — Transfer duty (stamp duty)
21 October 2013 onwards
Victoria — Transfer duty (stamp duty)
1 July 2021 onwards
Land transfer duty — non-principal place of residence (current rates)
Land transfer duty — principal place of residence (current rates)
Western Australia — Transfer duty (stamp duty)
7 May 2026 onwards
Professional costs, lowest and highest
Conveyancing, inspections and lender fees at the cheapest and dearest quotes you have. If you only have one quote, use it for both and widen it as you collect more.
Registration and search fees
Set by the land titles registry rather than negotiated, but they differ by state and are adjusted, so the current figure is entered rather than assumed.
Contract date
Chooses which version of the duty scale applies. Scales change on legislated dates and a contract signed either side of one is assessed differently.
The two headline figures are the floor and the ceiling. Budget against the ceiling; anything below it is a pleasant surprise rather than a plan.
The split between the fixed and variable components is the useful part. The fixed component is duty and registration, and no amount of shopping around changes it. The variable component is the only part your effort can move, and seeing how small it often is against duty puts the effort in proportion.
Costs as a share of the price is the figure to carry between properties. It changes with the price because duty scales are progressive, which is why a more expensive property costs proportionally more to buy, not just absolutely more.
Every figure below is computed by the same calculator on this page, from the inputs described. Nothing here is typed in by hand, so an example cannot disagree with the tool.
The spread between the quotes is a few thousand dollars; duty is an order of magnitude larger. That ratio is the argument for spending your energy on the purchase price rather than on the conveyancer.
Identical price, identical quotes, different statutory component. Comparing the fixed line between states is the cleanest way to see what duty alone contributes.
Duty is assessed on the price from the statutory scale for the state and contract date, including the concessional scale where you indicate you qualify for one.
The quoted costs are added at both ends of the range you supplied, and the registry fees at both. If you enter the low and high the wrong way round, they are ordered rather than producing an inverted range.
How every calculator on this site is built · Regulatory sources
Duty on the price you entered
Where the market value exceeds the price — a transfer between related parties, for instance — duty is assessed on the higher figure and this will understate it.
Your quotes are complete
Quotes that exclude disbursements or exclude GST are a common source of a bill larger than expected. The conveyancing calculator exists to put them on one footing first.
No mortgage insurance
At a low deposit the premium can exceed every other cost combined, and it is not included because premiums are not published.
It brackets, it does not predict
The range is only as good as the quotes you put into it. A range built from two guesses is two guesses wide.
Ongoing costs are elsewhere
Rates, insurance and strata start after settlement and are not purchase costs. The investment property cashflow calculator covers those where the property is let.
Adds transfer duty to your deposit and the other upfront costs, to show the cash you need to complete a purchase.
Works out the highest price you can complete on, given what you can borrow and the cash you have, once transfer duty and purchase costs are paid out of the same money.
Puts conveyancing quotes on the same footing — GST in or out, disbursements in or out — and totals what the legal side of a purchase will actually cost you.
This calculator can be embedded on a business website, branded to match it, with a call to action that sends the enquiry to that business rather than collecting anything here.