Buying a home in Queensland

Before you sign anything

1. Get the seller's disclosure statement and certificates. Since 1 August 2025 the seller must give these to you before you sign. Read the title search for easements, covenants and registered interests, and read the notices section.
2. Have your finance genuinely underway. Pre-approval is not approval. The finance date in the contract has to be realistic for your lender, not for the agent.
3. Decide your dates before you write them in. Fourteen days for finance and seven to ten for building and pest is common, but if your broker says three weeks, write three weeks.
4. Check who the buyer is. Buying in your own name, jointly, through a trust or a company has duty and concession consequences. Changing the buyer after signing is usually a new dutiable transaction.
5. Ask about the pool, the shed and the deck. Unapproved building work and non-compliant pool fencing become your problem at settlement.
6. Send the contract to your solicitor before you sign if you possibly can. If you have already signed, send it the same day, because the cooling-off clock has started.

The conditions that actually protect you

Subject to finance. The standard REIQ condition requires you to take reasonable steps to obtain approval by the date, and allows termination if approval on satisfactory terms is not obtained. If you are not going to make the date, ask for an extension in writing before it passes. A late notice is not effective, and a buyer who simply fails to settle is at risk of losing the deposit and being sued for the difference on a resale.

Subject to building and pest. Have the inspection done early enough that you have time to read the report and take advice. The condition generally allows termination if you are not satisfied with the report acting reasonably, and it is not a general escape hatch. Serious findings can also be used to negotiate a price reduction or a repair before settlement.

Cooling off. The five business day period sits over the top of everything and is the only unconditional right to walk. It costs 0.25 per cent of the price. On an $800,000 purchase that is $2,000, which is a great deal cheaper than the alternatives if something has genuinely gone wrong.

Other conditions worth adding depending on the property: satisfactory searches, sale of your existing home, body corporate records inspection for a unit, and due diligence on flooding or overlays.

What your solicitor does between contract and settlement

• Diarises every date and tells you what is due and when, in writing.
• Orders searches appropriate to the property: title, registered plan, land tax, rates, water, transport and infrastructure, contaminated land, planning and, for a unit, body corporate records.
• Reviews the seller's disclosure against the searches and raises anything inconsistent.
• Deals with the lender, the mortgage documents and the electronic settlement workspace.
• Lodges the duty assessment and applies any concession you are entitled to.
• Calculates the settlement adjustments, so you only pay rates, water and body corporate levies from settlement onwards.
• Runs the pre-settlement inspection issues, because you are entitled to the property in essentially the same condition as at contract, with inclusions present and working.
• Settles, and confirms with you and the agent so keys can be released.

Duty, concessions and the occupation rules

Transfer duty is assessed by the Queensland Revenue Office and is usually payable within 30 days of the liability arising. Concessions available at August 2026 include the home concession, which applies a concessional rate to the first $350,000 of the value of a residence with no upper value cap, and the first home concession for established homes, currently full relief up to $700,000 phasing out at $800,000. For contracts signed on or after 1 May 2025, eligible first home buyers of a new home can obtain a full concession with no property value limit. A first home vacant land concession is also available. Check every figure against the QRO calculator, because thresholds change.

The conditions attached to these concessions are strict. You generally must move into the home within one year of settlement and live there. Selling, transferring, or renting out the whole property before you move in, or within a year afterwards, can result in a reassessment. If your circumstances change, notify QRO. Voluntary disclosure is treated very differently from being found out.

If you are buying with a partner and only one of you is a first home buyer, or you are buying through a trust or company, the concession position changes. Raise it before the contract is signed rather than at the duty assessment stage.