How Much Does It Cost to Sell a House in Australia? (2026)

Ask an agent what it costs to sell a house and you'll hear a commission percentage. Ask the full question — what did this property actually cost you, door to door — and the answer has seven lines, not one. In 2026 the visible costs of selling an Australian home run about 3–5% of the sale price. The invisible one, the loan interest you paid while owning, is routinely six figures and appears on no agent's quote. This guide prices every line, state by state, with worked numbers you can reproduce in the property sale profit calculator.

The Seven-Line Ledger: Why "Selling Costs" Is the Wrong Frame

Most guides answer "what does it cost to sell" with the last three lines of a much longer ledger. The full exit accounting looks like this:

• 1. Buying costs — the stamp duty, conveyancing and inspections you paid on the way in. Spent years ago, but part of what this property must return before you're ahead.
• 2. Loan interest — every month's interest across the whole holding period. Usually the largest line by far.
• 3. Holding costs — council rates, insurance, maintenance, strata. A common planning figure is about 0.75% of the property's value per year.
• 4. Agent commission — the percentage everyone quotes.
• 5. Fixed selling costs — marketing, conveyancing, mortgage discharge, auctioneer.
• 6. Tax — capital gains tax if it's an investment property.
• 7. The balance still owing — not a cost, but the reason your bank is paid before you are at settlement.

Lines 4 and 5 are what this article prices in detail. Lines 1–3 and 6 are why the total can surprise you — and why a "profitable" sale can still leave you behind, which we get to in the break-even section.

Agent Commission in 2026: What Each State Actually Charges

Commission is negotiated, not fixed, and it moves with the market and the postcode. The benchmarks below are the typical rates a metro and regional seller should expect to be quoted in 2026:

*Fixed selling costs here = marketing at 0.5% of the price ($4,250 on $850k) + conveyancing $1,500 + lender discharge $350 + the state's discharge registration fee. Two traps in agent quotes: first, always confirm whether the rate is GST-inclusive — a "2%" quote that turns out to be 2.2% with GST costs an extra $1,700 on this sale. Second, tiered structures ("1.8% plus 10% of anything above the reserve") can be excellent or expensive depending on where the reserve is set — model both outcomes before signing.

The Fixed Costs: Conveyancing, Discharge, Marketing and Auction

Conveyancing — $800 to $2,500. Sellers pay more than buyers because the seller's side prepares the contract of sale and the title and disclosure documents, and in most states that contract must exist before the first open home. Budget it at listing time, not settlement time.

Mortgage discharge — about $500 to $750 all in. Two parts: your lender's discharge administration fee (commonly around $350) and the state's discharge-of-mortgage registration fee, which ranges from about $126 in Victoria to $248 in Queensland.

Marketing — around 0.5% of the price. Photography, floor plans, the listing-portal fees and a signboard. On an $850,000 sale, about $4,250 — and unlike commission, most of it is payable even if the property doesn't sell.

Auctioneer — roughly $600 if you sell by auction, on top of the agency commission. Staging is the optional wildcard: $2,000–$8,000 for a typical campaign. Agents will tell you it returns more than it costs; that's sometimes true and never guaranteed — treat it as a marketing decision, not a rule.

The Cost Every Agent-Fee Calculator Leaves Out: Loan Interest

Here is the line that changes the whole answer. An $800,000 loan at 6% p.a. on a standard 30-year principal-and-interest schedule costs about $232,219 in interest over just the first five years. That is roughly nine times the $24,000 commission a 2% agent charges on a $1.2 million sale — yet commission dominates every "cost of selling" conversation, and the interest appears in none of them.

The early years of a mortgage are interest-heavy by design: of the roughly $287,784 in repayments made over those five years (about $4,796 a month), only $55,565 reduced the loan. The other $232,219 was interest, and the bank is still owed $744,435 at settlement. This is why a seller can be told "you made $200,000" and see far less at the bank: the price rise is real, but so were five years of interest that no one added to the ledger.

Capital Gains Tax: How Selling Costs Legally Reduce the Bill

If you're selling your own home, the main residence exemption generally means no CGT and you can skip ahead. For an investment property, the selling costs you just priced do double duty: under the cost-base rules (section 110-25, ITAA 1997), incidental selling costs — agent commission, marketing, conveyancing — reduce your capital proceeds, and the incidental costs of buying — stamp duty, conveyancing, inspections — are added to your cost base. Both shrink the taxable gain. Loan interest on a rented property is the exception: it never joins the cost base, because it was already deductible against rent year by year.

One dated fact worth modelling rather than reacting to: from 1 July 2027 the 50% CGT discount is replaced for gains that accrue after that date, under law passed in June 2026. Sales contracted before 1 July 2027 keep the full discount, and later sales get a cost-base reset that preserves the discount on gains accrued up to that day — it is an apportionment, not a cliff. Estimate your tax either side of the line with the CGT calculator, and see our full guide to the discount change for the mechanics.

Your Break-Even Sale Price: The Number That Keeps You Whole

Put the whole ledger together for one worked example — a $1,000,000 NSW house bought in 2021 with an $800,000 loan at 6%, sold for $1,200,000 in 2026:

A $200,000 "profit" that is actually a $143,464 loss against every dollar the owner put in. Which raises the only question that matters before you list: what sale price would keep you whole? For this example the break-even price is about $1,347,000 — the price at which the sale covers buying costs, five years of interest, holding costs, selling costs and tax, and returns exactly $0. Every property has its own break-even number, and it moves with your loan size, rate, holding period and state. (None of this makes selling wrong — sometimes the right move is taking a known loss — but you should know the number before the auction, not after.)

State by State: What It Costs to Sell an $850,000 Home

Using each state's typical metro commission and the fixed costs above, the visible cost of selling an $850,000 home in 2026 ranges from about $23,200 in Melbourne and Sydney to $30,100 in Brisbane — the spread is almost entirely the agent rate. Regional sellers should add roughly 0.8 percentage points of commission everywhere. And if you're selling to buy again, remember the next purchase brings its own stamp duty — check it for your state in the stamp duty calculator before you commit the sale proceeds.

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