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A statement of a private sale · 5 lines

Sell your property privately: following the money

Sell without an agent and there is no agent’s trust account, and nobody whose job is to chase the numbers. This guide follows the money instead: from the buyer’s deposit, through the adjustments at settlement and the land tax of the year, to the tax that comes after. It is a guide in plain words, published by Dotto from the official sources listed on each page.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Every rule here is named for the state or the federal body that sets it. Your solicitor or conveyancer applies them to your sale, and the ATO and your state’s revenue office or consumer body are the places to check.

A heap of Australian coins, silver and gold, close up and softly lit
Australian coins, close up. Photo by SlimeyFox on Pixabay
The money trail

Five lines, in the order the money moves

Each line is one of this guide’s five pages. The right-hand column carries the figure the official sources give for it, with the state or body it belongs to.

  1. At the offer

    Where the deposit goes

    With no agent in Victoria, the buyer pays the deposit to you, and it goes to your solicitor, legal practitioner or conveyancer, or into a special purpose account in both your names. Other states, by state.

    10%usual deposit in Victoria; no law sets it

  2. Before settlement

    The clearance certificate every seller needs

    Every Australian-resident seller needs an ATO clearance certificate, given to the buyer at or before settlement. It can take up to 28 days to issue.

    15%withheld without one, any value, contracts from 1 January 2025 (ATO)

  3. Settlement day

    Adjustments at settlement

    Rates and other outgoings are adjusted between you and the buyer. In Victoria, the day of settlement is yours to pay for.

    Day 0settlement day: the seller’s in Victoria, WA and Queensland, generally the buyer’s in SA

  4. The year of sale

    Land tax when you sell

    In Victoria, on contracts from 1 January 2024, land tax may not be passed to the buyer below an indexed threshold. NSW, Tasmania and South Australia are set out too.

    $10.7mVictoria’s threshold for the year from 1 January 2026

  5. The tax return

    When the main residence exemption is partial

    A home rented out, used for a business, or not lived in from the start may be only partly exempt from capital gains tax.

    6 yearsa former home earning rent can stay your main residence, if no other home is treated as it (ATO)

Who holds it

Without an agent, who holds the money

An agent’s trust account is where a deposit usually waits: in Victoria, a buyer pays the deposit to the agent managing the sale, who holds it in trust until settlement or passes it to a conveyancer’s or legal practitioner’s trust account. Take the agent away and that step goes too. Victoria fills it with the solicitor, conveyancer or joint account above; the deposit guide sets out what five states’ official sources say, and where they are silent.

The other money in a sale moves through other hands. A buyer who has withheld tax because there was no clearance certificate pays it to the ATO at or before settlement. And in NSW, land tax the seller still owes may need to be paid as part of settlement.

Dated lines

Dates that move the numbers

  • 1 January 2024Victoria: sellers may no longer pass land tax to a buyer when the price is under the threshold.
  • 1 January 2025ATO: withholding without a clearance certificate is 15%, on property of any value; before this it was 12.5%, on property valued at $750,000 or more.
  • 1 January 2026Victoria: the land tax threshold for the year is $10,700,000, rising each year with inflation.
  • 1 October 2026Victoria: most of the changes in the state’s new property sales laws start.
  • 1 July 2027Victoria: the current process for releasing a deposit early is repealed, and buyer and seller can instead agree to it in the contract.
  • The contract dateATO: the gain, loss or exemption is reported in the year the sale contract is signed, not the year of settlement.
About this guide

What this guide is

A plain-language guide to the money in selling your own home, published by Dotto. It quotes no market prices and gives no figure the official sources do not give. Where a state’s page is silent, the guide says so rather than filling the gap.