Property Purchase Cost Calculator

Know your numbers before you offer

Going to an auction or making an offer without knowing your full costs is risky. This calculator starts from the total funds you have available — not your "deposit" — because stamp duty, conveyancing, lender fees and any LMI all come out of that same pool first. What's left is your genuine deposit, and the loan you need is the gap between that and the purchase price.

This is the single most common budgeting mistake we see. A buyer with $200,000 saved and a $1,000,000 target assumes a 20% deposit and no LMI. In reality, roughly $55,000 disappears into duty and costs, leaving about $145,000 — a 14.5% deposit, an 85.5% LVR and an LMI premium they hadn't planned for.

What comes out of your funds, in order

• Stamp duty and registration fees — the largest item, and non-negotiable unless a concession applies.
• Conveyancing or solicitor — $1,200–$2,500.
• Building and pest inspections — $400–$800 per property, and you may pay for several.
• Lender fees — application, settlement and valuation, $0–$800 depending on the lender.
• LMI — only if the resulting LVR is above 80% and no scheme or guarantor applies. Often capitalised onto the loan.
• Buffer — keep 1–3 months of repayments aside; lenders like to see it and moving costs add up.

Worked example

A first home buyer in Victoria with $130,000 available targets a $720,000 townhouse. Because they qualify for the first home buyer concession, duty is far lower than standard, and costs total roughly $9,000 including conveyancing, inspections and lender fees. That leaves about $121,000 as deposit — a 16.8% deposit and an 83.2% LVR, so a modest LMI premium applies unless they use the First Home Guarantee, which removes it entirely. Their loan lands near $599,000, or about $3,600 a month at 6.0% over 30 years.

Change the target to $780,000 and the concession disappears at the cap, duty jumps sharply, and the same $130,000 supports a much smaller deposit. Testing prices either side of a concession threshold is one of the highest-value things you can do with this calculator.

Before auction day

Have pre-approval in place, know your absolute maximum including costs, and remember that at auction there is no cooling-off period and your deposit is payable on the day. If you're bidding at the edge of your capacity, confirm with your broker how a higher price changes your LVR — crossing 80% or 90% changes both your LMI and your rate.

Keep reading

• The home loan process, step by step.
• Stamp duty calculator — your biggest single cost.
• LMI calculator — what a smaller deposit really costs.
• First home buyer hub — caps and concessions by state.
• How pre-approval works.