You know what you can borrow and what cash you have. This works out the price you can actually complete on once duty and costs are paid out of the same pot.
It takes the borrowing figure from you, whoever produced it — your lender, your broker, or the borrowing scenario calculator here.
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.
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
Amount you can borrow
Whatever figure you have been given. This calculator does not second-guess it and does not need to know where it came from.
Cash and equity available
Everything you can put in: savings, a gift, released equity from another property. Duty and costs come out of this before any of it becomes a deposit.
State and contract date
Duty scales differ by state and change on legislated dates, so both are needed. The date is the contract date, not the settlement date.
Other purchase costs
Conveyancing, inspections, registration and lender fees. Duty is legislated and computed for you; these are quoted, so they come from you.
The headline is the highest price at which the total — price plus duty plus costs — still fits inside your borrowing plus your cash. Push a dollar past it and the money runs out at settlement.
The deposit line is what comes from your own funds at that price. If it looks small relative to the price, check the loan-to-value ratio before you go further: a high ratio usually attracts mortgage insurance, which this does not include and which will reduce the price you can actually reach.
Cash left over is the buffer for everything that turns up between contract and settlement. A result that leaves nothing is a result that assumes nothing goes wrong.
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.
Compare the maximum price against borrowing plus cash. The shortfall is duty and costs, and it is why the price you can complete on is well below the money you appear to have.
The same money buys a different property in a different state on a different basis. Duty is the largest single reason, and it is worth seeing the size of that difference before choosing where to buy.
Duty depends on the price, and the price you can afford depends on the duty. There is no single formula to rearrange, because the scales differ: most are piecewise linear and one is quadratic below its threshold.
What every scale does share is that duty rises with value, which makes total outlay strictly increasing in price. So the answer is found by repeatedly halving an interval that is known to contain it, a fixed number of times, and taking the result to the cent below.
A fixed number of steps rather than a tolerance matters: a loop that stops when it is close enough can stop in a different place on a different machine, and two people entering the same figures would get different answers.
How every calculator on this site is built · Regulatory sources
The borrowing figure is yours
Nothing here assesses whether you can borrow it. If the figure is optimistic, so is the price.
Duty on the price
Duty is assessed on the dutiable value, which is normally the price but can be the market value where they differ. The calculator uses the price.
No mortgage insurance
Premiums come from insurers’ tables and are not published. At a small deposit the premium is large enough to change the answer materially.
Concessions you may not qualify for
Ticking first home buyer applies the concessional scale. It does not test eligibility, which depends on residence requirements, prior ownership and value caps that no form field captures.
South Australia returns no figure
The South Australian duty schedule could not be verified against a government source, so no duty is applied there and the price shown ignores it. Seven jurisdictions are covered.
Settlement is not the whole cost
Moving, immediate repairs and the first council rates notice all arrive shortly after. None is in this figure.
Works out transfer duty on a residential purchase from the statutory scale published by the state or territory, for the contract date you give.
Solves for the loan a set of assumptions you control will support — income, declared expenses, commitments, an assessment buffer and a surplus you want to keep.
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.
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.