Queensland just shut first home stamp duty help to buyers without permanent residency

Seven weeks ago Queensland changed who is allowed to buy a first home without paying transfer duty, and it did so on a government web page rather than at a press conference. The first home buyer Queensland stamp duty concession now carries a residency test. Hold a 482, a 485 or a student visa and you no longer pass it. Most of the households this affects will find out at the contract table, in the middle of the spring and summer selling season.

What changed on 1 August

The Queensland Revenue Office page setting out the first home transfer duty concession was last updated on 31 July 2026. It now states that a buyer must “be an Australian citizen, permanent resident or specified foreign retiree”, and adds in the same line that this “doesn’t apply for transactions entered into before 1 August 2026.” The page frames the change around the date a transaction is entered into. A citizen or a permanent resident buying a first home still qualifies. A temporary visa holder does not, regardless of how many years they have lived, worked and paid tax in Queensland.

The page names a third category, the specified foreign retiree. For most readers of this masthead the test still comes down to two doors, citizenship or permanent residency, and a temporary visa opens neither.

What the first home buyer Queensland stamp duty concession is worth

The saving on an established first home is worth up to $24,525. A first home valued at $700,000 or under attracts no transfer duty at all. Between $700,001 and $799,999 a partial concession applies, with a valuation if required. At $800,000 and above the first home concession falls away and only the ordinary home concession remains. The first home concession for a new home, which for contracts from 1 May 2025 cuts duty to nil with no value cap, and the first home vacant land concession now carry the same residency test. Losing access to a full exemption below $700,000 is no rounding error on a settlement statement, and it lands on buyers who have usually spent years assembling a deposit.

The ordinary home concession carries the same test

The obvious next question is whether a temporary visa holder can fall back on the plain home concession, the ordinary one that survives above $800,000. They cannot. The Queensland Revenue Office page for that concession, last updated on 31 July 2026, carries the same requirement: for transactions on or after 1 August 2026 the buyer must “be an Australian citizen, permanent resident or specified foreign retiree”. A temporary visa holder loses the ordinary home concession as well as the first home concession, and the gap is wide enough to decide whether a purchase proceeds at all.

Permanent status also decides a land tax question

Queensland’s absentee land tax rules run in the same direction. The Queensland Revenue Office page on absentees states that “Australian citizens and permanent visa holders are not deemed absentees.” No matching carve out exists for a temporary visa. The absentee surcharge applies from a taxable land value of $350,000 and runs at 3 per cent. Where an owner’s time outside Australia would otherwise bring them within the absentee rules, the visa held by the person on the title decides the result. It is a second point at which the boundary between temporary and permanent status is drawn in money rather than in words.

The office that assesses, and the minister who owns the policy

The Queensland Revenue Office administers transfer duty and land tax, assesses every concession claim and publishes the eligibility tests that buyers and conveyancers work from. Its first home concession page, as it stood on 21 September 2026, carried the residency requirement in plain terms alongside the note excluding transactions entered into before 1 August 2026. It is the office a buyer or a conveyancer should approach in writing before a contract is signed rather than after a claim has been refused. Its published pages are what a conveyancer will rely on.

David Janetzki is Queensland’s Treasurer, and also Minister for Energy and Minister for Home Ownership. That combination matters here. Transfer duty, the Boost to Buy shared equity scheme, the First Home Owner Grant and electricity prices all sit inside one set of responsibilities, which makes his office the single point of contact for almost every cost question a first home buyer in this state has. Whether the residency test was modelled for its effect on temporary visa holders in South East Queensland is a question for him rather than for any one agency, as is the number of concessions refused on the new ground since 1 August.

What a reader on a 482 should do before signing

Treat the concession as unavailable until somebody confirms in writing that it is available. Ask a conveyancer to check the eligibility test against your visa before you make an offer, rather than during a cooling off period. Rebuild the cash to settlement figure with full transfer duty in it, because a pre-approval prepared earlier in the year may have assumed a concession that can no longer be claimed, and a mortgage broker who works regularly with 482 holders will already have seen the difference in practice. If permanent residency is close, ask the Queensland Revenue Office directly how the test applies to the date a transaction is entered into, because that is the wording the page uses.

The suburbs this paper writes for are full of households who arrived on a temporary visa, paid Queensland tax for years and treated a first house as the point at which they stopped feeling like guests. A line on a government web page, updated on 31 July, now says that point waits for a permanent visa. A government is entitled to make that choice. Whether it was made with these families in view is a question for the Treasurer’s office and the Queensland Revenue Office.