First Home Plus - concession on duty for vacant land

The First Home Plus scheme provides eligible purchasers with concessions on how much stamp duty is owing when buying vacant land to build a home.

As we did not buy an existing home, a different stamp duty is calculated based on the value of the vacant land. In our case we saved a significant amount of money in paying duty on vacant land knowing that when we extend the loan to include the build of our home no further stamp duty is requred.

According to the OSR rules in NSW, there is no duty on vacant land valued up to $300,000. As our land purchase was higher than this, we had some concessions of duty to pay for vacant land purchased between $300,000 and $450,000.

Or solicitor sent us these forms to complete after exchanging on the contract. The forms can be found on the Office of State Revenue, NSW website htttp://www.osr.nsw.gov.au

We used the following formula found on the site to calculate the duty we would need to pay. Simply multiply your purchase price by 0.1049 and then subtract $31,470.

We handed this cheque made out to OSR to our solicitor to process on settlement. Settlement on Landcom properties are 30 days after exchanging the contract. This is a lot earlier than the normal 42 days.