Western Australia

A Worked Example: What a $700,000 Perth Apartment Actually Costs

A concrete, line-by-line walkthrough of duty, FIRB fees, deposit and settlement costs for a foreign buyer purchasing an off-the-plan Perth apartment.

Updated 1 August 20266 min read

General information, not advice. Foreign investment rules, duties and taxes change and depend on your personal circumstances (visa status, entity structure, property type). Always confirm current requirements with FIRB, RevenueWA, and a licensed conveyancer, migration agent, or tax adviser before acting.

Every other guide on this site covers one piece of the cost puzzle — duty here, FIRB fees there, financing somewhere else. This one puts them all in the same place, against a single realistic scenario, so the abstract percentages turn into an actual dollar figure. Treat the shape of this example as the useful part; treat every individual number as illustrative, not a quote.

The scenario

A foreign buyer purchasing a new, off-the-plan two-bedroom apartment in Perth for $700,000 — the realistic category for most foreign buyers under the current established dwelling ban (see our FIRB guide) — financing with a 30% deposit and a 70% loan-to-value ratio, roughly the midpoint of what our financing guide describes as common for non-resident borrowers.

The line-by-line breakdown

Item	Amount	Notes
Purchase price	$700,000
Loan (70% LVR)	$490,000	Financed portion
Deposit (30%)	$210,000	Your cash contribution to the purchase price
Standard WA transfer duty	$27,265	$11,115 + 4.75% of the amount over $360,000, per the general rate scale
7% foreign buyers duty surcharge	$49,000	7% of the full $700,000 — see our tax guide
FIRB application fee	~$15,000 (indicative)	Indexed every 1 July — see the caveat below
Settlement agent / conveyancing fees	~$2,000	Typical range, varies by firm
Pre-settlement building inspection	~$600	Off-the-plan apartments typically get a practical-completion inspection rather than a full pre-purchase inspection
Loan establishment & valuation fees	~$750	Varies by lender
International transfer / FX margin on your deposit	~$2,100	Illustrative 1% margin on a $210,000 transfer — a dedicated FX service is usually cheaper than a retail bank
Total cash needed on top of the deposit	≈ $96,715	Sum of the rows above (excluding the deposit itself)
Total cash required at settlement	≈ $306,715	Deposit + total extra costs

The takeaway

On this scenario, the costs stacked on top of your deposit come to roughly 14% of the purchase price — meaning the cash you need at settlement is closer to 44% of the property’s value, not the 30% the deposit alone suggests. That gap between “deposit” and “actual cash required” is the single most common budgeting mistake foreign buyers make, and it’s almost entirely made up of the FIRB fee and the 7% duty surcharge — two costs a local buyer simply doesn’t pay.

What would change this number

A higher or lower LVR changes your deposit directly — an 80% LVR (harder to get as a non-resident, per our financing guide) would mean a $140,000 deposit instead of $210,000, but the duty, surcharge and FIRB fee stay the same regardless of how you finance the purchase, since they’re based on the purchase price, not your loan
A different purchase price moves every duty-related figure — WA transfer duty and the foreign buyers surcharge both scale with price, and the FIRB fee moves between tiers at different price points
An established dwelling exemption, if one applies to your specific circumstances, would remove the need for a new-build purchase entirely — but this is the exception, not the rule, under current rules (see the FIRB guide)

The one number here most likely to be wrong by the time you read this