Foreign Buyer Surcharges Across Australian States, Compared

If you're not an Australian citizen or permanent resident, buying residential property in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, or WA means paying an additional surcharge duty on top of standard transfer duty. NSW and Victoria currently charge 8%, while Queensland and Western Australia charge 7%. These surcharges apply to the full purchase price and stack directly on top of the progressive transfer duty bands — there's no banding or tapering to soften them, and no offsetting concession for foreign first-home buyers.

Because the surcharge is a flat percentage of the entire price rather than a marginal rate on a slice of it, its cash impact is large and simple to calculate: a foreign buyer purchasing a $1,000,000 property in NSW pays $80,000 in Surcharge Purchaser Duty alone — before a cent of standard transfer duty is added on top. The same purchase in Queensland or WA would attract $70,000 in surcharge duty instead, a $10,000 difference driven entirely by which side of the NSW/Victoria–Queensland/WA divide the state falls on.

The contrast with what's available to local buyers makes the policy intent clear. NSW, for example, runs a First Home Buyer Assistance Scheme that fully exempts eligible new and existing homes up to $800,000 from transfer duty, with a concessional rate up to $1,000,000 — but that scheme is for Australian citizens and permanent residents buying their first home, not foreign buyers, who receive no equivalent relief regardless of whether it's their first property in the country. The gap between what a local first-home buyer and a foreign buyer pay on an identical $800,000 property is therefore not just the surcharge rate — it's the surcharge on top of a purchase that would have been entirely duty-free for the local buyer.

The policy logic is consistent across every state that charges a surcharge: ease pressure on housing affordability for local buyers by making foreign investment in residential property comparatively more expensive. If you're a temporary resident on a visa rather than a permanent resident, you'll likely still be classified as a foreign person for these purposes even if you live and work in Australia full-time — check your specific state revenue office's current definition before you commit to a purchase, since the classification rules are stricter than most buyers expect.