The $700,000 line: what Queensland first home buyers pay above it.

Most first home buyers in Queensland know there is a concession. Fewer know its exact shape, and almost nobody budgets for what happens in the hundred thousand dollars above it. This guide sets out the numbers as the Queensland Revenue Office publishes them, then explains why a threshold that has not moved since June 2024 is quietly becoming a deadline in North Queensland.

The concession, exactly

For contracts signed on or after 9 June 2024, an eligible first home buyer pays no transfer duty on a home valued at $700,000 or less. That is a complete exemption, and it is worth up to $24,525 — the largest single saving available to a buyer in this state.

Above $700,000 the concession does not stop dead. It tapers, in ten steps of $10,000, and disappears entirely at $800,000. The way it works is slightly unusual: duty is first worked out at the home concession rate (the owner-occupier rate any buyer who lives in the property gets), and then a fixed first home concession amount is deducted. The deduction shrinks as the price rises.

Purchase price	First home buyer pays	Investor pays (general rate)
$650,000	$0	$22,275
$700,000	$0	$24,525
$710,000	$2,185	$24,975
$720,000	$4,370	$25,425
$730,000	$6,555	$25,875
$750,000	$10,925	$26,775
$780,000	$17,480	$28,125
$800,000	$21,850	$29,025
$850,000	$24,100	$31,275

Two things to notice in that table. First, a $30,000 step from $700,000 to $730,000 adds $6,555 in duty. Across the whole taper, roughly 22 cents of every extra dollar between $700,000 and $800,000 goes to the Queensland Revenue Office. Nobody budgets for that, because it does not appear anywhere until the contract is drawn.

Second, the concession never fully abandons an owner-occupier. Above $800,000 a first home buyer still gets the ordinary home concession rate — $24,100 at $850,000 rather than the $31,275 an investor pays. It is the extra first-home layer that runs out, not the owner-occupier rate underneath it.

A $695,000 house and a $730,000 house are not $35,000 apart. For a first home buyer they are $41,555 apart.

Why this is a deadline, not just a threshold

The threshold does not move. Prices do.

Take Burdell, a family suburb on Townsville's northern edge. Its median house price over the twelve months to June 2026 was $691,000, on 251 sales, with prices growing at around 17% a year. That median sits nine thousand dollars under the line. At anything like that growth rate, the typical Burdell house crosses $700,000 within months. When it does, the typical Burdell first home buyer stops paying nothing and starts paying thousands — without anything about them, or the policy, having changed.

Townsville more broadly is in the same position. PropTrack had the city's median house at $665,000 in August 2026, about 10% higher than a year earlier. The growth has slowed — July recorded the first monthly fall since March 2023 — but the level is already within reach of the line in most of the suburbs first home buyers actually shop in.

This is the part that separates a threshold from a deadline. A threshold is a number you can plan around. A deadline is a number that is coming towards you whether you plan or not. In the growth suburbs of North Queensland, $700,000 has become the second kind.

What to do with this

Treat $700,000 as a wall, not a budget

If you qualify for the concession, crossing $700,000 for a marginally better property is the most expensive small decision in the entire purchase. A house that is $15,000 nicer and $15,000 over the line costs you the $15,000 plus $3,300 in duty you would not otherwise have paid. Know your position before you look, and let the wall do some of your filtering for you.

Compare total cost, never sticker price

Every comparison between two properties should include the duty on each. The Queensland stamp duty calculator on this site does the first home and general figures side by side, and it now uses the exact QRO method for the taper — so the number it gives you at $730,000 is the number your solicitor will give you.

If you are already in the taper, know the dollar

Between $700,000 and $800,000 the concession is knowable to the dollar before you make an offer. Work out the duty at the price you intend to offer and at the price you fear you might have to pay. If the difference between those two duty figures is larger than the difference in the property, that tells you something about where to stop.

Investors: this does not apply to you, but it applies to your competition

At $695,000, an investor pays $24,300 in transfer duty on the same house a first home buyer gets for nothing. When you find yourself bidding against a first home buyer under the line, understand that they have a $24,000 head start on cost, and they can afford to pay more for the house than you can and still come out ahead. Above $800,000 that advantage narrows to the home concession alone.

Eligibility, briefly

The first home concession has conditions beyond price. You must move in within a year of settlement and live there for at least a year, you must never have owned residential property anywhere before, and the home must be established or complete rather than vacant land (vacant land has a separate concession). The Queensland Revenue Office publishes the full rules; your solicitor or conveyancer confirms your eligibility as part of the transfer. If any of those conditions is uncertain for you, resolve it before you rely on the exemption in your budget.

Where this fits

This is one number among several a buyer should know before they start looking. The others — what comparable properties actually sold for, the real cost of holding, and what the rest of the market is doing — are the work a Townsville buyers agent does before a client falls in love with a house rather than after. The duty line is simply the sharpest of them, because it is the only one with a cliff in it.

Transfer duty figures in this guide are from the Queensland Revenue Office's published home and first home concession rates and worked examples, for contracts signed on or after 9 June 2024, checked 29 September 2026. Burdell median and sales volume: suburb data for the twelve months to June 2026. Townsville median and monthly movement: PropTrack via realestate.com.au, July and August 2026. This is general information about how Queensland transfer duty is calculated, not personal financial, tax or legal advice, and eligibility for any concession is assessed by the Queensland Revenue Office, not by us.