A Melbourne first home with no stamp duty is a flat near the city or a house 30 km out.

A first home buyer in Victoria pays no stamp duty on a home worth $600,000 or less. On a $600,000 purchase that is worth $31,070 — the duty anyone else would pay. Above $600,000 the discount shrinks, and at $750,000 it is gone.

That line decides a lot. Take each Melbourne suburb's median sale price for a three-bedroom house over the last two years: the middle of those 358 medians is $951,000, and a first home buyer pays the full $52,130 of duty on a house at that price. So we asked a narrower question: across Melbourne's suburbs, where does a typical home still come in at $600,000 or under?

The answer splits the city: units near the centre, houses on the fringe.

A two-bedroom unit: 107 suburbs, and 24 of them near the city

Take the median sale price of two-bedroom units in each suburb over the last two years. In 107 of the 222 Melbourne suburbs with enough sales to measure, it is $600,000 or less.

Many are close in. Twenty-four are within 10 km of the CBD:

Suburb	Distance to CBD	Two-bedroom unit median	Sales
Carlton	2.0 km	$582,500	132
Southbank	2.4 km	$600,000	1,119
North Melbourne	3.3 km	$560,000	141
Melbourne (CBD)	3.4 km	$540,000	983
Parkville	3.6 km	$510,000	64
Abbotsford	4.3 km	$600,000	121
Travancore	4.7 km	$370,000	77
Kensington	4.8 km	$513,500	98
Brunswick East	5.9 km	$586,500	210
Flemington	5.9 km	$526,000	53

Some of these sit exactly on the line. A median is the middle sale, so in Southbank and Abbotsford about half of two-bedroom units sold for more than $600,000 and about half for less.

A three-bedroom house: 17 suburbs, all at least 29.6 km out

Now do the same for three-bedroom houses. Of the 358 Melbourne suburbs with enough sales, the typical three-bedroom house comes in at $600,000 or under in 17:

Suburb	Distance to CBD	Three-bedroom house median	Sales
Tarneit	29.6 km	$585,000	448
Truganina	32.1 km	$600,000	296
Rockbank	37.4 km	$552,500	68
Aintree	37.6 km	$590,000	36
Mickleham	37.9 km	$595,000	173
Wyndham Vale	40.0 km	$550,000	300
Manor Lakes	41.6 km	$580,000	108
Melton	43.8 km	$525,000	185
Kurunjang	45.7 km	$565,000	173
Melton South	46.1 km	$525,000	266
Melton West	47.8 km	$550,000	107
Brookfield	48.0 km	$561,000	87
Kalkallo	48.1 km	$563,000	62
Mambourin	48.7 km	$542,500	20
Donnybrook	49.1 km	$577,500	82
Beveridge	53.0 km	$555,000	34
Wallan	62.1 km	$589,000	136

The closest is Tarneit, 29.6 km from the CBD. Every one of the 17 is on the western or northern fringe: Wyndham and Melton in the west, the northern growth corridor from Mickleham to Wallan in the north. None is in the east or the south-east.

Within 20 km of the CBD, the typical three-bedroom house in a suburb sells for $1,330,000.

The gap in the middle

Between a flat near the city and a house on the fringe there is the band from $600,000 to $750,000, where the discount shrinks. The nearest suburbs with a three-bedroom house median in that band are in Melbourne's inner north-west and west:

Suburb	Distance to CBD	Three-bedroom house median	Duty for a first home buyer	Saving
Sunshine West	14.6 km	$735,000	$35,253	$3,917
Broadmeadows	17.2 km	$644,000	$9,888	$23,822
Dallas	18.6 km	$624,888	$5,403	$27,160
Laverton	21.3 km	$615,000	$3,197	$28,773
St Albans	22.6 km	$703,500	$25,723	$11,557

The taper is steep. Inside the band, each extra $10,000 on the price adds roughly $2,100 to $2,700 of duty, because the discount is being withdrawn at the same time as the price rises. Laverton's typical three-bedroom house costs $30,000 more than Tarneit's and carries $3,197 of duty. Sunshine West's costs $150,000 more and carries $35,253.

What this means if you are buying

Three things follow, and none of them are advice about whether to buy.

The exemption is a threshold, so the exact price matters. A home that sells for $600,000 carries no duty; one that sells for $625,000 carries about $5,400. If you are close to the line, run the actual figure through a duty calculator before you set your limit.

Check you qualify before counting on it. The State Revenue Office sets conditions on who counts as a first home buyer and on living in the home. Its first home buyer page is the authority, not us.

A suburb median is not a price. Half of three-bedroom houses in Tarneit sold for more than $585,000. Use the median to find where to look, and recent sales of comparable homes to decide what to offer.

What we measured, and what we left out

Prices are two years of sales. Each median covers sales recorded in public listings data between 20 September 2024 and 20 September 2026. In a rising market a two-year median sits below today's prices, so some suburbs listed under $600,000 may already be over it.

We only used medians with enough sales behind them. A suburb needs at least 15 sales of the type and bedroom count before we quote its median. Smaller suburbs, and suburbs where few homes of that type change hands, are not in the counts above.

"Melbourne" is the ABS Significant Urban Area. That takes in Melton and Wallan and leaves out Geelong. Distances are to the CBD.

This is stamp duty only. Victoria also runs a First Home Owner Grant for new homes, and there are federal schemes for buyers with smaller deposits. Their rules and price caps differ, and we have not checked them here.

The duty figures come from our own calculator. It applies the formula in section 57JA of the Duties Act 2000 (Vic) — no duty up to $600,000, then duty rising in proportion to full duty at $750,000 — which we verified against the State Revenue Office on 18 September 2026.

The data behind this

Sale prices: sales recorded in public listings data, 20 September 2024 to 20 September 2026, as held in our suburb sales tables. Duty: Duties Act 2000 (Vic) s57JA and the State Revenue Office Victoria's first home buyer duty exemption and concession page, both read on 18 September 2026. Suburbs: the 446 suburbs in the ABS Melbourne Significant Urban Area with recorded sales.