Conveyancing Fees in Australia 2026: What You Should Pay in Every State

Conveyancing is the legal process that moves a property's ownership from the seller to you, and in 2026 it costs most first home buyers $1,500 to $2,500 all up, with the cheapest published schedules landing under $1,000. That's the number everyone wants pinned down first, so we lead with it: what you pay state by state, what you actually get for the money, and who can legally do the work where you're buying.

We don't sell conveyancing and we don't let a conveyancer pay us to shape what this guide says. Nearly every other page you'll find on this topic is run by a bank or a firm trying to win your file. This one isn't, so we can be blunt about where the costs hide and when you genuinely need to spend more.

Last updated 15 August 2026. Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring property ownership from a seller to a buyer in Australia. It costs from under $1,000 all-in at the cheapest end and more typically $1,500 to $2,500 for a standard purchase, with published professional fees running from $660 in Melbourne to $2,680 in the Northern Territory, plus $200 to $800 in government searches, certificates and the PEXA settlement fee. Who may legally be paid to do that work differs by state, and our conveyancer vs solicitor guide covers it jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Registry and PEXA fees changed on 1 July 2026; the figures below reflect the new FY2026-27 schedules.

What Is Conveyancing?

Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring property ownership from one person to another. When you buy a house, unit or block of land in Australia, conveyancing is what makes that transfer legally binding. It covers everything from reviewing the contract of sale before you sign through to settlement day, when the money changes hands and the title is registered in your name.

What that means day to day: your conveyancer reviews the contract, runs searches on the property's title to check for hidden problems, watches the cooling-off clock, works alongside your lender so finance lands on time, calculates the final settlement figures down to the cent, and then handles the actual transfer of ownership on the day. In most states you're legally required to use a licensed conveyancer or solicitor. Even where it isn't strictly mandatory, doing it yourself is a poor trade, because one missed clause or skipped search can cost far more than the fee.

What does a conveyancer do for the buyer?

A conveyancer's whole job is to protect your side of the deal. Here's what that looks like, stage by stage.

If you are buying with someone else, one of the decisions they will put in front of you is how the two of you hold the title. Our guide to joint tenants vs tenants in common covers what each means for survivorship, unequal shares and tax.

Reviewing the contract before you sign. Your conveyancer reads the contract of sale the seller's side prepared and looks for unusual clauses, unfavourable conditions and obligations you might not have spotted. This is the single most valuable thing they do. Plenty of first home buyers sign without really understanding what they've agreed to, and a good conveyancer will walk you through every clause in plain English and flag anything that should be changed or struck out before you commit.

Running the property searches. Once you're under contract, your conveyancer orders a series of searches to make sure the property is what it appears to be:

• Title search, confirming the seller actually owns the property and can sell it
• Encumbrance check: mortgages, easements, caveats and other legal claims
• Council certificate: outstanding rates, planned developments, zoning restrictions
• Water certificate: outstanding water charges
• Flood and contamination checks: environmental risk on the land
• Strata report: if you're buying in a complex, body corporate finances, looming special levies, by-laws

These searches matter even more when you're buying vacant land to build on. A sewer easement, stormwater easement, flood overlay or building covenant can quietly carve a metre or two off your buildable area, or force a particular roof pitch or façade, all of which change what you can build and what it costs.

Watching the cooling-off period. In most states there's a cooling-off period after you sign during which you can pull out, usually for a small penalty. Your conveyancer tracks that window and makes sure your building and pest inspection and finance approval are sorted before it closes.

Coordinating with your lender. Your conveyancer works with your mortgage broker and lender so formal finance approval lands before the contract deadline. If your loan has conditions, they help clear them. This is the bit that catches people out: if finance falls through after cooling-off and you didn't have a finance clause, your deposit is on the line.

Sorting stamp duty and your grants. Your conveyancer calculates stamp duty, lodges any first home buyer exemption or concession, and processes your First Home Owner Grant paperwork as part of settlement. You can estimate the duty yourself first with our stamp duty calculator.

Running settlement. Your conveyancer works out the final adjustments (council rates, water, strata), prepares the legal documents and manages the electronic settlement through PEXA. On the day they log in and the transfer of money, title and mortgage all happen at once, so you don't have to be there or do anything. There's a full walk-through in our property settlement guide.

Conveyancer or solicitor? In NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory you can use a licensed conveyancer (a settlement agent in WA, a conveyancing agent in the NT) or a solicitor. Queensland and the ACT are solicitor-only, and for the same structural reason: both prohibit non-lawyers from engaging in legal practice for a fee, and neither has a conveyancer-licensing law creating an exception to that prohibition. Which one your own purchase needs, and the work each licence legally covers, is set out in our conveyancer vs solicitor guide.

How Much Does Conveyancing Cost in Australia? (2026)

Conveyancing fees swing depending on which state you're in, how complicated the property is, and whether you use a conveyancer or a solicitor. There is no government-set fee, so instead of guessing at an average we went and read the published fixed-fee schedules on conveyancing, settlement and law firm websites in every state in August 2026, and converted them all to a GST-inclusive basis so they compare like with like.

Those are professional fees taken from published fixed-fee schedules, read in August 2026. They are not averages and we haven't invented a midpoint: they're the low-to-high spread across the published schedules we sampled in each state, and a firm outside that sample will quote outside the range. Where a column says "not separately verified", firms in that state quote disbursements as an estimate rather than a published figure, and we would rather leave a gap than print a number we can't stand behind.

Two things to read carefully. The sample is thin in Tasmania and the ACT, where only two firms publish a price at all, so treat those rows as indicative rather than settled. And the Victorian range is wide for a real reason: a budget Melbourne conveyancer and a full-service law firm are selling genuinely different things, and both are legitimate. Our free find a conveyancer service matches you by state, which is the level the licensing actually works at.

What you're actually paying for: the disbursements

Disbursements are the third-party costs your conveyancer pays on your behalf and passes straight through. They aren't profit for the conveyancer; they're the real cost of the searches and the registry. These vary by state and registry, so treat the figures below as a guide rather than a fixed price list.

Always ask for an itemised, fixed-fee quote in writing before you engage anyone, so you can see exactly where the professional fee ends and the pass-through costs begin.

The other government fee nobody warns you about: registration

On top of the searches, every state charges a fee to register the transfer of the title into your name. Your conveyancer pays it through PEXA at settlement and passes it straight through, and it is separate from stamp duty. From 1 July 2026 the FY2026-27 schedules apply:

• NSW: a flat $182.73 to register the transfer (NSW Land Registry Services FY26-27 schedule; it was $175.70 under the old schedule, and plenty of fee guides still quote that stale number).
• VIC: priced on the property value: $104.30 plus $2.34 per $1,000 of price for an electronic transfer, capped at $3,614. On a $750,000 home that's $1,860. Land Use Victoria is consulting on a flat-fee restructure, but as at August 2026 the value-based formula still applies.
• QLD: the steepest: $248.04 plus $46.56 for each $10,000 of price above $180,000. On a $750,000 home that's $2,901.96, a genuine line item to budget for that most "conveyancing fees" guides quietly ignore.
• ACT: a flat $496.00 for 2026-27, up from $479.00. It's a flat fee rather than value-based, so unlike VIC and QLD it doesn't climb with the property price.
• Your mortgage is a separate registration again. Registering the loan itself is charged per document, not bundled into the transfer fee. Queensland charges $248.04 per instrument in 2026-27, the same as the base transfer lodgement. If you're buying with a loan, that's a line most fee guides leave out entirely.

These are government charges, not conveyancer profit, but they belong in your moving-in budget. Our move-in cost calculator counts them alongside stamp duty, inspections and the rest.

Why your quote and your final bill don't always match

This is the part that fills up the online forums, and most cost guides skip it. The professional fee you're quoted is usually firm. The disbursements aren't, because they depend on what the property turns out to be. A quote built for a standard house gets more expensive the moment a strata report, an extra title search, an unregistered easement or a second council certificate is needed. None of that is a conveyancer rorting you, it's the property being more complicated than the quote assumed.

Two ways to protect yourself. First, ask the conveyancer to quote the professional fee as a genuine fixed fee, and to estimate disbursements with a clear note that they're billed as incurred. Second, if you're buying a strata or off-the-plan property, say so up front so the strata report and any extra searches are in the quote from day one, not bolted on later. A quote that's suspiciously cheaper than everyone else's usually means something was left out.

How the too-cheap quote actually works

The headline-fee trick has a consistent anatomy, and once you've seen it you can't unsee it. These patterns are all taken from real 2026 pricing pages and fee guides:

• The sub-$400 "conveyancing fee". Queensland firms warn about this one openly: a $395 headline fee usually means every disbursement is billed separately and the inclusions list is short. By the time the searches, certificates and PEXA fee land, you're at or above what the fixed-fee firms quoted.
• The per-minute meter. One Melbourne operator advertises a $700 professional fee, then bills "extra work" at $9 per minute in minimum 15-minute blocks, and charges contract review, the single most valuable part of conveyancing, as a $275 extra. Their own worked example for a straightforward matter totals $1,099 before GST.
• The base fee that excludes the basics. NSW firms caution that an $899 headline fee often bills phone calls, contract amendments, requisitions and settlement adjustments as extras, and some low quotes even charge separately for coordinating with your lender.
• The complexity surcharges. Fixed fees commonly exclude off-the-plan purchases, trust or SMSF buyers and settlement extensions, and strata adds an owners-corporation certificate and report (one advertised example: $220 to $385 on top). None of that is wrong, but it belongs in the quote, not the final bill.

The test that cuts through all of it: ask for the all-in estimate for your specific property, professional fee plus itemised disbursements plus GST, in writing. A good firm answers in one email. A firm that answers with a headline number and an asterisk is telling you something.

Typical conveyancing fees NSW in 2026

The four NSW firms we read in August 2026 publish $990 to $2,200 in professional fees, plus $150 to $350 in searches for a house and $270 to $590 for strata. NSW has a reputation as the dearest state, and the sample doesn't really bear that out: across those four firms the pattern is mixed rather than a clean Sydney premium. The one firm publishing prices for both Sydney and regional NSW charges an identical fixed fee in Newcastle and in Sydney metro, and another notes that regional properties can cost more, not less, because council search fees run higher outside the city. What is true is that the state's detailed vendor disclosure and strata rules mean more work for your conveyancer, and a strata purchase pushes you toward the top of the range. One thing first home buyers should know: your conveyancer also lodges the NSW stamp duty exemption (up to $800,000) or concession (up to $1,000,000) as part of settlement, worth checking against our stamp duty calculator.

Typical conveyancing fees VIC in 2026

The Melbourne schedules we could verify publish $660 to about $1,100 including GST: a St Kilda firm quotes a fixed $660 to $990 depending on complexity, a Hawthorn conveyancer charges a flat $900 plus GST for buying or selling, and a Melbourne-wide practice publishes about $1,100 for a standard purchase. Full-service law firms charge well above that, but they quote per matter rather than publishing a price, so they can't go in the table. For scale, one Melbourne firm's own market guide puts premium full-service work at $1,500 to $3,000 or more. That's a guide to the market rather than a published fee, which is exactly why we've kept it out of the range above. Compare inclusions before you compare prices. Victoria runs on the Section 32 vendor statement, a thick disclosure document your conveyancer reads closely for outstanding permits, planning overlays, easements and anything else that could bite you later. There's a 3 business day cooling-off period on private-treaty sales (none at auction), and PEXA is mandatory.

Typical conveyancing fees QLD in 2026

Queensland purchase fees start at $885 including GST on the schedules we read, below a typical Sydney or Melbourne quote, and the expensive part of a Queensland purchase is the government registration charge rather than the professional fee. There's a firm-by-firm Brisbane and Gold Coast breakdown further down this page. One thing to get right: since 1 August 2025, sellers must give buyers a Form 2 Seller Disclosure Statement (under the Property Law Act 2023) before you sign, along with a set of prescribed certificates. If they don't, you can terminate the contract any time up to settlement, so your conveyancer checks this disclosure carefully.

Worth knowing: Queensland doesn't licence standalone conveyancers, so the "conveyancing" fee here is really a solicitor's fixed-fee property service. And if you're buying a new build, the $30,000 QLD First Home Owner Grant applies to new homes valued under $750,000. The Queensland Government confirmed in its 2026-27 Budget (23 June 2026) that the $30,000 grant continues beyond 30 June 2026, so there is no longer a scheduled drop back to $15,000. The qualifying date is when you sign the contract, not when you settle. Your conveyancer lodges the grant for you.

Typical conveyancing fees SA in 2026

The three South Australian schedules we read land between $990 and $1,860 including GST, with one firm charging a flat $1,690 plus GST regardless of the property price. Conveyancers are registered under the Conveyancers Act 1994 by Consumer and Business Services, not by Land Services SA. SA uses the Form 1 vendor statement and gives buyers 2 clear business days to cool off (watch the name clash: SA's Form 1 is a completely different document to Queensland's Form 2). Your conveyancer also checks land tax. SA's $15,000 First Home Owner Grant for new builds, with no property value cap since June 2024, is processed at settlement; the SA grants breakdown has the detail.

Typical conveyancing fees ACT, TAS and NT in 2026

The three smallest jurisdictions get skipped by most fee guides, and the ones that don't skip them tend to print an average with no source attached. Here is what we could actually verify.

In the ACT conveyancing is solicitor work (see the licensing table below), and published standard-purchase fees run $1,796 to $2,090 including GST. One Canberra firm publishes $1,796 across its two stages, another $2,090 on a schedule valid to 31 December 2026, and a third quotes $1,700 plus GST. A fourth advertises lawyer conveyancing from $1,795 without saying whether GST is included. You will also see a cheaper $1,395 package advertised around Canberra, but that one is a transfer of title rather than a standard residential purchase, so it isn't the same product. Budget the territory's transfer registration fee on top, which rose to $496.00 for 2026-27.

Tasmania is hard to price honestly, because barely any firms publish a figure. The two that do quote $2,000 to $2,090 including GST for a purchase, a long way above the sub-$1,000 numbers that float around in national fee guides, and one of them discloses minimum disbursements of $525 on top. Selling is cheaper, from $1,800 at the same two firms. That's a two-firm sample and we won't pretend it settles the state, but it is enough to say the cheap-Tasmania line you'll read elsewhere isn't supported by anything published. Conveyancers are licensed there under the Conveyancing Act 2004 and regulated by Consumer, Building and Occupational Services. The Land Titles Office charges $256.76 to register a transfer and $39.20 for a title search, both from 1 July 2026.

The Northern Territory looks dear on what's published: the four NT firms that name a price quote $1,490 to $2,680 including GST. The usual explanation is a shortage of practitioners, and that doesn't hold up, because there are at least nine identifiable licensed NT firms. What's scarce is published pricing, not practitioners: most of them won't put a number on their website, so there's very little price pressure. Ask three for a written quote before you engage anyone. Registering the transfer costs $181 at the NT Land Titles Office.

When do you pay conveyancing fees?

As a buyer, you generally pay at or after settlement, not up front. Most conveyancers don't charge their professional fee until you actually go under contract, so engaging one early to review the contract costs you nothing, and several publish that as a promise: one Brisbane firm states plainly that there are no upfront costs and you pay on settlement day only. Disbursements (searches and certificates) may be billed as they're incurred, with the balance settled at the end. Selling is the exception, and it catches people out. A seller has to order title searches and the disclosure certificates before the property can be marketed at all, so some of a seller's disbursements are genuinely payable up front rather than out of the sale proceeds.

Who pays conveyancing fees, the buyer or the seller?

Both. This is the most common misunderstanding on the topic, and the answer is simple: each side engages and pays its own conveyancer. There's no shared fee and no split bill. Consumer Affairs Victoria puts it plainly, that usually the buyer and the seller each engage a legal practitioner or conveyancer to handle the process. Your conveyancer works for you and only you, and the seller's works for them.

What differs is what each side is paying for. The seller pays to produce the contract and the disclosure pack, because the law makes those the seller's documents. In NSW a seller can't even market the property until the prescribed documents are attached to the contract: the title search, the registered plan, a drainage diagram and a current section 10.7 planning certificate. In Victoria the seller must give you a Section 32 vendor statement before the property is sold. Queensland has the Form 2 and South Australia the Form 1. You receive all of that at no cost.

You, as the buyer, pay for the searches you choose to run, plus stamp duty and the registration fees. That's why a buyer's total is usually the bigger of the two even when the professional fees are similar. Across the schedules we read, the sale-side professional fee is consistently the cheaper of the two: Keylaw charges $885 to buy and $619 to sell, Gullickson $990 and $770, Spot On $1,150 and $825. If you're selling as well as buying, our guide to what it costs to sell a house covers the vendor side in full.

One line on your settlement statement runs the other way, and it surprises people. Council rates, water access charges and body corporate levies are apportioned by day at the settlement date. If the seller has already paid those beyond settlement, you reimburse them for the portion covering your ownership. It isn't a fee anyone is charging you, it's you picking up your share of bills already paid, but it's real money on the day and it belongs in your budget. Land tax is the exception: whether it's adjusted at all depends on the contract, and the standard NSW contract generally doesn't adjust it unless a special condition says so.

Conveyancing fees Brisbane and Gold Coast 2026

Queensland is the state people ask about most, and it's the one where the received wisdom is backwards. Because QLD is solicitor-only, every guide assumes it's the expensive state. The published fee schedules say otherwise. Here's what Queensland firms actually advertise for a standard residential transaction, read in August 2026.

All figures include GST and exclude disbursements, except Empire Legal, which bundles all standard searches into its fee and so isn't comparing like with like. Strip that one out and a Queensland purchase runs $885 to $1,400 in professional fees, which is cheaper than a typical Sydney or Melbourne quote, not dearer.

Is the Gold Coast more expensive than Brisbane?

No, and the reason is more interesting than the answer. We checked eight Gold Coast firms. Only three publish an actual number, and two of those three charge exactly the same fee on the Gold Coast as they do in Brisbane, because they run one flat rate across the whole state. The other five publish a generic $800 to $1,500 market range or push you to a quote form without ever naming a price.

So "conveyancing costs Gold Coast" doesn't really have its own answer. It has the Queensland answer. If you're buying at Southport, Robina, Coomera or anywhere else on the coast, budget the same $885 to $1,400 professional fee a Brisbane buyer would, and judge firms on responsiveness and body corporate experience instead of postcode. The same holds for Logan, Ipswich and the Sunshine Coast. You can get matched with a Queensland property solicitor free, and because Queensland licenses at state level rather than by city, a Brisbane firm can act on a Gold Coast purchase without any trouble.

What Queensland disbursements actually cost

Queensland's searches are cheap and its registry fee is brutal, which is the opposite of how most people assume it works. The searches themselves come to roughly $310 to $620 for a house and $500 to $900 for a unit, the difference being the body corporate certificate at $86.95 and the extra community-titles searches a unit needs. Individual government line items, current for 2026-27: a title search is $25.71, a land tax clearance certificate is $50.20, and the PEXA settlement fee is $146.30.

Then comes the part that dwarfs all of it. Queensland's transfer lodgement fee is $248.04 plus $46.56 for every $10,000 of price above $180,000, so on a $750,000 home you pay $2,901.96 to register the transfer, and another $248.04 to register your mortgage. That single government charge is roughly triple the professional fee you were shopping around on. It's worth knowing before you spend an afternoon haggling a solicitor down by $200.

One Queensland-specific cost sits on the seller, not you. Since 1 August 2025 sellers must give buyers a Form 2 Seller Disclosure Statement with a set of prescribed certificates before you sign. Firms price that work at roughly $500 to $1,100 depending on whether it's a house or a unit with a body corporate, and it's the seller's document to produce.

Conveyancing fees Perth 2026 (settlement agents)

In Western Australia the person who does this work is called a settlement agent, not a conveyancer, and the job is officially "settlement" rather than conveyancing. Across five published Perth schedules the professional fee runs $770 to $1,490 including GST, with searches and certificates on top. WA works differently from the eastern states in a few ways that matter:

• No cooling-off period. WA doesn't have a standard cooling-off period for most purchases. Once you sign the Offer and Acceptance, you're committed. That makes pre-contract due diligence everything, your settlement agent has to review the contract before you sign, not after.
• Offer and Acceptance contracts. WA uses its own contract format. Your settlement agent prepares or reviews the Offer and Acceptance form and the general conditions.
• Landgate. WA's titles office is Landgate, and PEXA handles the electronic settlement.
• Keystart coordination. If you're buying with a Keystart loan (as little as a 2% deposit, no LMI), your settlement agent manages the specific Keystart requirements and documentation.
• WA stamp duty. Your settlement agent calculates and lodges the duty. First home buyers may qualify for an exemption or concession, see the WA grants breakdown.

What Perth settlement agents actually charge

Here's what five Perth settlement agents publish for a standard residential settlement, read in August 2026: Hartfield Conveyancing $770 including GST, Strategic Settlements from $800, Vicki Philipoff $880 on an online special, KDD Conveyancing from $990, and Flat Rate Settlements $1,490 to buy or $1,290 to sell. So $770 to $1,490 is the realistic professional-fee band, which makes Perth one of the cheaper capitals, not one of the dearer ones. Disbursements add roughly $250 to $450 on a standard freehold purchase and $400 to $600 on strata: a Landgate title search is $33.90, a Water Corporation certificate is $34.66 (or $48.17 if it's urgent), a strata section 110 certificate is $140, and PEXA is $146.30. Landgate's transfer registration fee is calculated on the property value rather than being a flat figure, so use Landgate's own transfer lodgement fee calculator for that one rather than trusting a round number in a fee guide.

The WA rule nobody tells you about

This is the most useful thing on this page if you're buying in WA, and almost nobody mentions it. Settlement agent fees in Western Australia used to be capped by a government scale. They aren't any more. Consumer Protection WA states it flatly: as of 3 February 2016, regulation of fees has ceased. Agents set their own prices now.

But the disclosure requirement survived the deregulation, and it's genuinely useful to you. Before you sign the Form 1 appointment to act, your settlement agent must give you a written costs disclosure setting out the maximum amount they will charge, under rule 6B(2) of the Settlement Agents Code of Conduct 1982. The appointment form you sign says you agree to pay up to that disclosed amount. That's a hard ceiling you're entitled to see in writing before you commit, and it's the single best defence against a quote that grows. If an agent won't put the maximum in writing before you sign, that tells you what you need to know. Worth checking they're licensed too: falsely claiming to be a licensed settlement agent carries a penalty of up to $100,000 for an individual and $500,000 for a body corporate.

Because there's no safety net once you've signed, picking an experienced settlement agent arguably matters more in Perth than anywhere else. Your only exit after signing is a condition in the Offer and Acceptance not being met: a finance clause or a building inspection clause, for example. You can find a settlement agent in Perth through NestPath.

The Conveyancing Process, Step by Step

Here's how a typical purchase unfolds from offer to keys, assuming a standard settlement of about 42 days.

Step 1, Engage a conveyancer before you make an offer. This is the most useful thing on this whole page. Your conveyancer should read the contract before you sign it, not after. Most won't charge until you actually go under contract, so there's no cost to lining one up early.

Step 2, Contract review. Your conveyancer reads the full contract, flags unusual clauses and unfavourable conditions, and explains the significant ones in plain English so you know what you're agreeing to.

Step 3, Exchange and cooling-off. You sign, and the cooling-off clock starts, 5 business days in NSW and QLD, 3 in VIC, 2 in SA, none in WA. During that window you can pull out for a penalty (around 0.25% of the price in NSW and QLD; Victoria uses a different formula). The full state-by-state detail is in our cooling-off period guide.

Step 4, Property searches. Title searches, council and water certificates, zoning and easement checks, flood and contamination searches, and a strata report if it applies. These usually take 1 to 2 weeks.

Step 5, Finance approval. Your lender, coordinated by your mortgage broker, issues formal approval after a valuation and final assessment. Your conveyancer makes sure every loan condition is cleared before the contract deadline.

Step 6, Pre-settlement inspection. You walk through the property to confirm it's in the same condition as when you signed, nothing damaged, removed or changed.

Step 7, Settlement. Your conveyancer runs the electronic settlement through PEXA. Funds transfer, the title lodges, stamp duty is paid and the seller's mortgage is discharged, all at once. You collect the keys. Have home insurance in place from settlement day: once the title is yours, the risk is too. It's also worth lining up your electricity, gas and internet before settlement day; our utility connection service can help.

How Long Does Conveyancing Take?

Most settlements take 30 to 42 days from signing the contract to getting the keys. Faster is possible, 21 to 28 days if your finance is pre-approved and the searches come back clean, and some sellers negotiate longer. Here's the fuller picture.

What Causes Delays?

• Finance issues: the lender takes longer than expected on formal approval, or the valuation comes in low
• Title problems: caveats, unregistered easements or boundary discrepancies that surface during searches
• Strata issues: outstanding levies, a planned special assessment, or pending litigation against the body corporate
• Incomplete documents: missing certificates, or a slow mortgage discharge from the seller's lender
• Seller delays: the seller isn't ready to vacate, or their own purchase falls over

Your conveyancer manages the whole timeline and keeps you posted. The one thing that helps most is engaging them early, ideally before you start making offers, so they can move the moment you find the right place.

First Home Buyer Conveyancing, What's Different?

If this is your first purchase, your conveyancing runs a few extra steps that repeat buyers skip. This is where a conveyancer who genuinely knows the first home buyer schemes earns their fee, because the property settlement and the grant paperwork have to line up.

• Stamp duty exemption or concession. Your conveyancer lodges your first home buyer duty exemption or concession with the state revenue office. Depending on your state and price, that can save you anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000+.
• First Home Owner Grant (FHOG). If you're buying a new build or a house and land package, your conveyancer processes the FHOG, typically $10,000 to $30,000 depending on the state. Our grants hub has the state-by-state detail.
• 5% Deposit Scheme coordination. If you're using the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme (formerly the First Home Guarantee), 5% deposit, no LMI, your conveyancer works in the Housing Australia (formerly NHFIC) documentation. From 1 October 2025 this scheme expanded, no income caps, no annual place limit, and higher property price caps, so far more first home buyers now qualify.
• First Home Super Saver timing. If you used the First Home Super Saver Scheme for your deposit, your conveyancer helps line up the release timing with settlement.
• Plain-English handholding. A good first home buyer conveyancer explains every step, answers the "silly" questions without making you feel silly, and never assumes you already know the jargon. You've never done this before, that's normal, and the right conveyancer treats it that way.

The headline advice doesn't change: engage a conveyancer before your first offer. Use our borrowing power calculator to set your budget, get pre-approved through a broker, and have your conveyancer on standby so nothing stalls when you find the one.

Questions to Ask Your Conveyancer

Before you sign anyone up, run through this short list. The answers tell you most of what you need to know about whether they're the right fit.

• Is your fee a genuine fixed fee, and what's included? Get it in writing.
• What disbursements should I expect on top, and are any of those estimates likely to move?
• How much do you charge if the deal falls through before settlement?
• Are you licensed in the state I'm buying in, and what's your licence or practising certificate number?
• Do you work with first home buyers regularly, including the grants and stamp duty concessions?
• Are you on my lender's approved panel?
• Who is my point of contact, and how quickly do you respond during the critical weeks?

If a conveyancer answers all of these clearly, that's a good sign. If they dodge the fee questions, keep looking. NestPath matches you with vetted conveyancers for free.

How to Choose the Right Conveyancer

The gap between a good conveyancer and a bad one is the gap between a smooth settlement and weeks of stress. Here's what to look for:

• Fixed-fee quoting. Choose a conveyancer who quotes a fixed professional fee up front. Hourly billing leaves you guessing at the final cost.
• First home buyer experience. First home purchases have their own paperwork, grant applications, duty exemptions, scheme coordination. A conveyancer who does these often will be more patient and more across the concessions you're entitled to.
• Lender panel membership. If your conveyancer is on your lender's approved panel, communication is faster and settlement smoother. Ask your mortgage broker who they rate.
• Responsiveness. You should be able to reach them within a day. In the weeks between signing and settlement, slow replies turn small problems into big ones.
• Local knowledge. Every state has its own laws, contracts and quirks. Pick someone licensed and experienced where you're buying.

Red flags: hourly billing with no estimate, hard to reach by phone, no clear quote, won't explain things in plain English, or pushing you to waive cooling-off without spelling out the risk.

NestPath matches you with vetted conveyancers who specialise in first home buyer settlements, free.

Conveyancing Mistakes to Avoid

1. Not engaging a conveyancer before signing. By the time you've signed, your cooling-off period is already running down. Line one up as soon as you start making offers, most won't charge until you're under contract.
2. Chasing the cheapest quote. A conveyancer who charges $600 but misses an encumbrance on the title costs you far more later. Weigh experience and responsiveness above the lowest price.
3. Not reading the contract yourself. Your conveyancer should explain every clause, but read it too. Pay attention to special conditions, sunset clauses, deposit terms and what happens if finance falls through.
4. Missing cooling-off deadlines. The cooling-off period is your safety net. Miss it and you lose the right to walk away, and potentially your deposit.
5. Skipping the building and pest inspection. Your building and pest inspection needs to happen inside the cooling-off window. Book it the same day you sign.
6. Treating pre-approval as guaranteed finance. Pre-approval is conditional. Your lender can still decline at formal approval if the valuation is low or your situation has changed. Make sure your contract has a finance clause. Our pre-approval guide has the full picture, and our borrowing power calculator helps you sanity-check the numbers.

Electronic Conveyancing, PEXA and the 2026 Competition Story

Almost every property settlement in Australia now happens electronically through PEXA (Property Exchange Australia). On settlement day your conveyancer logs into the PEXA workspace and the title transfer, mortgage registration, stamp duty payment and funds transfer all complete at the scheduled time. The PEXA fee sits inside your disbursements, and from 1 July 2026 it's $146.30 including GST for a standard single-title transfer ($167.42 across multiple titles), adjusted 4.1% for CPI under the ARNECC-governed pricing rules. Electronic settlement is mandatory for most transactions in NSW, VIC, QLD, WA and SA.

What's worth understanding in 2026 is how little competition sits behind that platform. PEXA handles roughly 90% of the conveyancing market and is effectively the only operator most people will ever use. A second network operator, Sympli, exists but has struggled to win broad adoption, partly because the major banks haven't taken up its workspaces for settlement. The plan that was meant to fix this, "interoperability", letting different platforms talk to each other so a buyer's and seller's representatives could use different operators, has stalled. The Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council suspended the interoperability program after it failed to secure the support and funding it needed.

On price, there's been some push-back. In March 2026 the NSW pricing regulator, IPART, rejected a proposed fee increase from PEXA, part of a broader move to tighten the pricing controls on what is, in practice, an essential monopoly service. For you as a buyer, none of this changes how settlement works day to day, but it's the reason the PEXA fee is a fixed line on your bill rather than something you can shop around for.

What Changed for 2026-27 (and What It Means for Your Bill)

Conveyancing had a busier-than-usual July. Five changes worth knowing about, because they explain why quotes moved and why your conveyancer asks for more paperwork than your parents remember:

• Registry fees rose on 1 July 2026. NSW's transfer registration went to $182.73, Queensland issued a revised FY26-27 schedule ($248.04 base plus $46.56 per $10,000 above $180,000), and Victoria applied its routine indexation. If a fee guide still quotes NSW at $175.70, it hasn't been updated.
• PEXA repriced with CPI. The electronic settlement fee rose 4.1% to $146.30 for a standard transfer, under the pricing rules set by ARNECC.
• New anti-money-laundering rules reached conveyancing. From 1 July 2026, lawyers, conveyancers and real estate professionals are captured by the AML/CTF regime, so expect more identity verification than buyers faced a year ago. It's not your conveyancer being difficult; it's the law.
• NSW got a new standard contract. The 2026 edition of the Contract for the Sale and Purchase of Land became mandatory on 1 June 2026, with revised cooling-off wording, a new AML warning and updated foreign-resident CGT withholding provisions (the old $750,000 threshold is gone).
• NSW strata certificates now disclose more. From 1 April 2026, the s184 certificate must reveal embedded utility networks, building product rectification orders and recent meeting activity, more protection for apartment buyers, and another reason the strata report is worth its fee.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is conveyancing in simple terms?

Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring property ownership from the seller to the buyer. It covers contract review, title searches, liaising with your lender, managing the cooling-off period and handling settlement. In most Australian states you need a licensed conveyancer or solicitor to do it.

How much does conveyancing cost in Australia?

Budget $1,500 to $2,500 all up for a standard purchase, though the cheapest published combinations land under $1,000, and treat the state range as the real answer rather than a national average. On the schedules we read in August 2026, professional fees run from $660 in Melbourne to $2,680 in the Northern Territory, plus $200 to $800 in disbursements. The cheapest entry prices are in Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland, the dearest in Tasmania and the ACT. Always get a fixed-fee quote in writing.

Is a conveyancer or solicitor cheaper?

A conveyancer is usually cheaper, typically $800 to $1,500 versus $1,500 to $3,000+ for a solicitor doing the same standard transfer outside Queensland. For a clean first home purchase the conveyancer is the better-value choice wherever you have one. Queensland and the ACT are solicitor-only, but that doesn't automatically mean expensive: Queensland's fixed-fee property solicitors publish purchase fees from $885 to $1,400, below a typical Sydney or Melbourne quote.

Can I do my own conveyancing in Australia?

In most states it's legal to do your own conveyancing, but it's strongly advised against. A licensed professional carries professional indemnity insurance that you don't, and one missed encumbrance, easement or contract clause can cost far more than the fee you'd save. For a first purchase, the protection is worth it.

How long does conveyancing take?

Usually 30 to 42 days from signing the contract to settlement. Fast settlements of 21 to 28 days are possible when finance is pre-approved and searches are clean, and extended settlements of 60 to 90 days are sometimes negotiated. Off-the-plan purchases take 6 to 18 months while you wait for the build to finish.

When do you pay conveyancing fees?

Generally at or after settlement, not up front. Most conveyancers don't charge their professional fee until you go under contract, so engaging one early to review the contract costs nothing. Disbursements such as searches may be billed as they're incurred during the process.

Who pays conveyancing fees, the buyer or the seller?

Both, separately. Each side engages and pays its own conveyancer, and there's no shared or split fee. The seller pays to prepare the contract and the vendor disclosure documents, the Section 32 in Victoria or the Form 2 in Queensland, and you receive those free. You pay for your own searches, stamp duty and the registration fees, which is why the buyer's total is usually larger. On the schedules we read, the sale-side professional fee is consistently a few hundred dollars cheaper than the purchase side.

Is conveyancing cheaper in Queensland?

On the professional fee, usually yes, which surprises people because Queensland is solicitor-only. Brisbane and Gold Coast firms publish fixed purchase fees from $885 to $1,400 including GST, below a typical Sydney or Melbourne quote. Where Queensland gets expensive is the government charge: registering a transfer costs $248.04 plus $46.56 for every $10,000 above $180,000, so a $750,000 purchase attracts $2,901.96 in registration alone, plus $248.04 to register your mortgage.

How much does conveyancing cost on the Gold Coast?

The same as the rest of Queensland, around $885 to $1,400 in professional fees plus $310 to $620 in searches for a house. Of eight Gold Coast firms we checked, only three publish a price, and two of those charge an identical flat fee on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane. There's no Gold Coast premium. A Brisbane firm can act on a Gold Coast purchase, because Queensland licenses solicitors at state level.

Do I need a conveyancer to buy a house in Australia?

It isn't legally required in every state, but it's strongly recommended. DIY conveyancing risks missing critical legal issues, encumbrances or contract clauses that could cost you thousands. The $800 to $1,500 fee is worth it for the legal protection, especially for first home buyers going through this for the first time.

When should I engage a conveyancer?

Before you make an offer, ideally as soon as you start seriously looking. Your conveyancer should review the contract before you sign anything, and most won't charge until you're under contract, so engaging early costs nothing. This matters most in WA, where there's no cooling-off period and you're committed the moment you sign the Offer and Acceptance.

What property searches does a conveyancer do?

A title search (ownership and encumbrances), a council certificate (rates, zoning, planned developments), a water certificate (outstanding charges), planning checks (overlays and restrictions), flood and contamination checks, and a strata report if you're buying in a complex (body corporate finances, by-laws, special levies). These take 1 to 2 weeks and cost roughly $200 to $800 in disbursements.

How much are conveyancing fees in Perth?

Five published Perth schedules run from $770 to $1,490 including GST in professional fees, plus roughly $250 to $450 in searches for a freehold purchase and $400 to $600 for strata. WA uses settlement agents rather than conveyancers. Because WA has no cooling-off period, your settlement agent must review the Offer and Acceptance before you sign, which makes engaging one early even more important than in other states.

Is there a maximum settlement agent fee in WA?

Not a government one, not since 3 February 2016, when Consumer Protection WA ended fee regulation. Settlement agents set their own prices now. But you keep one protection: before you sign the Form 1 appointment to act, your agent must give you a written costs disclosure stating the maximum they'll charge, under rule 6B(2) of the Settlement Agents Code of Conduct 1982. Ask for it in writing before you commit.

Do conveyancing fees include stamp duty and government fees?

No. Stamp duty is a separate state tax your conveyancer lodges for you, and the transfer registration fee ($182.73 in NSW, value-based in VIC and QLD, where a $750,000 purchase costs about $1,860 and $2,900 respectively) is a separate government charge again. A conveyancing quote covers the professional fee and usually estimates disbursements; budget stamp duty and registration on top.

Why is my final conveyancing bill higher than the quote?

Usually because the property turned out to be more complicated than the quote assumed: a strata report, extra searches, an off-the-plan contract or a settlement extension. The professional fee should not move if it was quoted as fixed; it's the disbursements and "extras" that grow. Protect yourself by asking for an all-in written estimate for your specific property, and by disclosing strata or off-the-plan up front.

Ready to find the right conveyancer or settlement agent for your first home? NestPath matches you with vetted professionals for free, no obligation, no pressure, just the right person for your situation.