Cash to Settle an $850,000 Investment Property, State by State

A 20% deposit on an $850,000 investment house is $170,000 in every state. The cash needed to settle is not. Once transfer (stamp) duty is added, the same purchase takes $198,100 in the ACT and $216,070 in Victoria: a $17,970 gap on an identical price, an identical loan and an identical rent.

That gap has to be found in cash, because a lender funding 80% of the price does not usually fund the duty. So the state changes how much has to be saved before the purchase can happen, and, if the savings are fixed, how thin the deposit ends up.

An earlier piece set duty against land tax over a ten-year hold. This one stays on day one and the first year.

The setup

One property, run through Plintha's finance engine once per state, with the exact inputs published alongside this post:

• Purchase price: $850,000, an established house bought after 7:30pm AEST on 12 May 2026
• Weekly rent: $680 ($35,360 a year, a 4.16% gross yield)
• Loan: 80% LVR, interest-only at 6.5%, so $680,000 borrowed
• Marginal tax rate: 37%
• General (investor) duty rates: no first-home or owner-occupier concession, no foreign-purchaser surcharge

The engine models two upfront items: transfer duty, which it computes exactly from each revenue office's schedule, and lenders mortgage insurance (LMI), which it estimates when the loan is above 80% of the price. At 80% there is no LMI, so in the table below the cash to settle is the deposit plus the duty.

Cash to settle, all eight jurisdictions

The schedules are those each revenue office publishes: Revenue NSW (its 2026/2027 table), the Queensland Revenue Office, WA's Department of Finance, RevenueSA, the Tasmanian and Victorian State Revenue Offices, the NT's Territory Revenue Office and the ACT Revenue Office. Two notes on currency: the ACT's current non-owner-occupier table is headed "transactions on or after 1 July 2025" and no later table had been published when this was checked in early October 2026, and the NT figure was checked against the Territory's own online conveyance calculator.

Five of the eight sit within $6,791 of each other. The other three do not: South Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria each ask for at least $12,480 more cash than the ACT, on the same price.

The last column restates the duty as rent: 68 weeks of this property's gross rent in Victoria, 41 weeks in the ACT.

What the duty does to the first year

Everything after settlement is the same in every state in this model: the same $44,200 of interest, the same $13,343 of operating costs, the same $35,360 of rent. That leaves a pre-tax shortfall of $22,183 in the first year, which is $427 a week. (Land tax is a separate, state-specific charge and is not in that figure; the engine's estimate for this house is $0 in several states and $2,108 a year in Victoria.)

Set against that shortfall, the duty is the larger number. Victoria's $46,070 is roughly 2.1 times the whole first-year pre-tax shortfall. The ACT's $28,100 is about 1.3 times.

Put the two together and the cash committed by the end of year one, before any tax effect and before land tax, is $238,253 in Victoria and $220,283 in the ACT. Of the Victorian figure, $170,000 is the deposit, which is still the buyer's equity. The rest has been spent.

The tax treatment of those costs is uneven, and that shapes the first-year position too:

• Transfer duty is generally not deductible. The ATO treats duty on the transfer of the title as a capital expense. It goes into the cost base and reduces the capital gain on an eventual sale, and does nothing for the first year's tax return. The ACT is the exception: land there is held under a Crown lease, and the ATO's rental properties guide treats stamp duty on an ACT lease as a deductible lease document expense to the extent the property is used to produce rent. The engine does not model that deduction, so the ACT figures here are before it.
• The holding shortfall is treated differently depending on the date. For an established dwelling bought after 7:30pm AEST on 12 May 2026, the loss can still be offset against salary until 30 June 2027. On the engine's numbers that brings the after-tax cost down from $427 a week to $216. From 1 July 2027 the loss is quarantined against residential property income and carried forward, and the weekly cost is the full $427. A purchase settling this month gets the lower figure for part of its first year only.

When the cash is fixed and the duty comes out of the deposit

The table assumes the buyer simply has more cash in a dearer state. Often the cash is fixed. Take the Queensland figure, $201,275, as a fixed amount of savings and spend it in Victoria instead.

After $46,070 of duty there is about $155,210 left for the deposit. That is 18.26% of the price, not 20%, and the loan rises to $694,790: an LVR of about 81.7% (the engine was run at 81.74%). Three things follow in the engine's output:

The extra $14,790 of borrowing costs $961 a year in interest. That is $11 a week after tax while the salary offset applies and $18 a week from 1 July 2027, for as long as the loan is interest-only.

Crossing 80% also brings LMI into the picture. The engine's figure of $3,627 is an estimate; actual premiums vary by lender and insurer and rise steeply as the deposit shrinks. If the premium is paid in cash, the buyer is short again; many lenders allow it to be added to the loan, which the engine does not model, and which would lift the interest figures above slightly. Unlike duty, LMI billed to the borrower is a borrowing expense under the ATO's rules, generally deductible over five years or the loan term, whichever is shorter.

When the cash is fixed, then, part of the duty difference between two states turns into a larger loan and a recurring cost.

What this comparison leaves out

• Other upfront costs. Conveyancing and legal fees, building and pest inspections, title and mortgage registration fees, loan establishment fees and any buyer's agent fee are not modelled by the engine and are not in these totals. Real cash to settle is higher than every figure in the table. Our guide to the upfront costs of an investment property lists them.
• Different prices. Duty schedules are stepped, so the ranking at $850,000 is not the ranking at every price.
• Holding costs by state. The engine's weekly cost excludes land tax, and land tax runs the other way in some places: the ACT has the lowest duty here and the highest estimated land tax. Cheapest to settle is not cheapest to hold.
• Concessions and surcharges. Concessions, foreign-purchaser surcharges and trust or company structures all change the duty figure.

The honest limitation is the first one: this is deposit plus duty, plus an LMI estimate where it applies, and nothing else. To see the duty, the LMI estimate and the weekly cost for a specific property at its own price, rent and deposit, you can run it through Plintha.

This article is general information, not financial, tax, credit or legal advice. It doesn't take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Figures use Plintha's engine with the assumptions stated above (an $850,000 established house, 80% LVR unless stated, interest-only at 6.5%, 37% marginal rate, general investor duty rates, standard operating-cost model) as at 16 October 2026, and will change if any of those inputs or any state's duty schedule changes. LMI figures are estimates. Check your own position with your state revenue office, your lender and a licensed adviser before acting.