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Virtual Buyers Agent(TM) · Adelaide, South Australia
The capital of South Australia, and the home of a defence shipbuilding programme that will run for decades. This page will not tell you what Adelaide is worth — it sets out the SA stamp duty, the local context, and what you have to confirm before you offer.
It does not publish an Adelaide median price, a rental yield, a vacancy rate or a growth figure, and it does not rank Adelaide against other capitals. Virtual Buyers Agent has no source it can cite for any of them, and a number we cannot source is a number we do not print.
It does not tell you which suburb to buy in, whether now is a good time, or what a property is worth. Virtual Buyers Agent holds no AFSL and no real estate licence, and every one of those is advice.
What it does is state the South Australian stamp duty rates that apply, name the registries that publish SA property data so you can read the real figures yourself, and list what is worth confirming before you sign anything.
General information only — not financial, legal, tax, or investment advice. Virtual Buyers Agent does not hold an AFSL or a real estate licence. Check your circumstances with appropriately licensed professionals before acting.
South Australia charges stamp duty (transfer duty) on property purchases. First home buyers building or buying a new home may be eligible for a duty exemption; RevenueSA sets the eligibility criteria and any property value limit.
| Purchase price | Duty |
|---|---|
| $0 - $12,000 | $1.00 for every $100 or part of $100 |
| $12,001 - $30,000 | $120 plus $2.00 for every $100 or part of $100 over $12,000 |
| $30,001 - $50,000 | $480 plus $3.00 for every $100 or part of $100 over $30,000 |
| $50,001 - $100,000 | $1,080 plus $3.50 for every $100 or part of $100 over $50,000 |
| $100,001 - $200,000 | $2,830 plus $4.00 for every $100 or part of $100 over $100,000 |
| $200,001 - $250,000 | $6,830 plus $4.25 for every $100 or part of $100 over $200,000 |
| $250,001 - $300,000 | $8,955 plus $4.75 for every $100 or part of $100 over $250,000 |
| $300,001 - $500,000 | $11,330 plus $5.00 for every $100 or part of $100 over $300,000 |
| Over $500,000 | $21,330 plus $5.50 for every $100 or part of $100 over $500,000 |
A foreign ownership surcharge of 7% applies to residential property.
General information only — not financial, legal, tax, or investment advice. Virtual Buyers Agent does not hold an AFSL or a real estate licence. Check your circumstances with appropriately licensed professionals before acting.
These are the standard investment rates. No first home buyer, owner-occupier or off-the-plan concession is applied here — eligibility turns on facts this page cannot establish.
Things worth having an answer to before you sign. A list of questions, not a list of answers — the answers depend on your contract and on the people advising you.
What the Form 1 vendor statement discloses, and what it leaves out.
What the certificate of title shows, and whether any encumbrance sits on it.
The council rates and the emergency services levy that will fall to you.
When stamp duty falls due, who lodges it, and whether the foreign ownership surcharge applies to you.
What a building inspection returns on an older property, including an asbestos and salt-damp assessment where relevant.
What is there and what is being built. Descriptive and checkable — no forecast, and no view on what any of it does to a price.
Adelaide is the capital of South Australia and the state's dominant population centre. What this page gives you is the stamp duty you will actually pay, the areas people ask about, and the checks that decide whether a specific address is right.
South Australia's largest industrial programme is defence, anchored by the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine program at the Osborne Naval Shipyard, alongside the Edinburgh Defence Precinct in the northern suburbs. Adelaide is also the headquarters of the Australian Space Agency, and the Lot Fourteen precinct on North Terrace hosts space, defence and technology tenants. Those are facts you can verify with the relevant Commonwealth and state agencies. What they will do to house prices in any particular suburb is not something we will tell you.
A list of places, not a shortlist. There is no price, no yield and no ranking here, and nothing on this page suggests one suburb over another.
Salisbury
Northern corridor centre close to the Edinburgh Defence Precinct and Technology Park, with urban renewal of the town centre underway.
Elizabeth
Northern suburb transitioning from its manufacturing past, close to the Lyell McEwin Hospital, a TAFE SA campus and RAAF Base Edinburgh.
Morphett Vale
Southern suburbs area with schools, local amenities and access to the Noarlunga train line.
Gawler
Historic town at the northern edge of Adelaide's commuter belt, served by the electrified Gawler rail line. Heritage character homes on larger blocks.
Noarlunga
Southern transport hub with its own train line terminus and the Colonnades shopping centre, close to Flinders University and its medical centre.
Para Hills
Established northern suburb with mature streetscapes, close to Adelaide's inner northern employment areas.
The bodies that publish it. Go to them for a figure rather than to us — we have no source we could cite for a market number, so we do not print one.
RevenueSA
The stamp duty rates that apply to your purchase, and land tax thresholds.
Australian Bureau of Statistics
Census counts, dwelling approvals and residential property price indexes, by capital city.
SA Property and Planning Atlas
Zoning, planning controls and property boundaries for a given address.
Law Handbook South Australia
What the Form 1 vendor statement and the SA cooling-off rules require of a seller and a buyer.
Named, checkable facts — not a case for buying here.
The AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine program is centred on the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide's west, alongside the existing Edinburgh Defence Precinct in the northern suburbs.
The Australian Space Agency is headquartered in Adelaide, at the Lot Fourteen precinct on North Terrace, which also hosts defence and technology tenants.
Three universities, the Royal Adelaide Hospital on North Terrace and the Lyell McEwin and Flinders hospitals give the city major health and education employment outside the CBD.
A compact metropolitan area on a single north-south plain, with electrified rail to Gawler and Seaford and a tram line through the CBD to Glenelg.
Everything a South Australian buyer needs to verify is published by a body you can name: RevenueSA for stamp duty and surcharges, Land Services SA for title, and PlanSA for zoning and development applications.
Once you have a specific property
The duty and the registries on this page change by state. The order of the work does not.
The properties you are actually weighing up, in one place, with the listing, the notes and the numbers attached to them.
The same named checks open on every one — the rates, the levy, the documents, the settlement costs.
What you saw, recorded against the property while you still remember it, rather than left in a photo roll.
What is still needed, visible, so the decision is made with the gaps in front of you.
What a search actually does to you
Nothing on this page is specific to where you are buying except the rates. The problem is the same everywhere; the numbers are not.
What gets lostWhat the workspace does
What gets lost
What the workspace does
Three properties in, the strata levy on the first one is a number you half remember from a PDF you closed a fortnight ago.
Financials
You checked what was near the place once, on your phone, in the car outside the inspection, and you are no longer certain which property that was.
Location
You asked an agent for the contract of sale on Tuesday. You are no longer certain which property that was.
Documents
Duty, legals, inspections and the deposit were four separate sums, worked out at four separate moments, across two different properties.
Offer
Virtual Buyers Agent does not answer that question, for Adelaide or anywhere else. We do not hold an AFSL, we do not publish market forecasts, and we do not rank capital cities against each other — a ranking is a recommendation however it is worded. What we do is take a property you are already considering and keep its recorded price, modelled cash flow, upfront costs and outstanding document tasks together, with supported calculations showing their assumptions.
We do not forecast that, and we would be cautious about anyone who does. Inferring suburb price movements from a defence program — even a very large one with a long timetable — is a prediction, not an analysis, and pointing at the Collins-class program as precedent is the same prediction wearing a history costume. What is verifiable is where the work is: the Osborne Naval Shipyard in the west and the Edinburgh Defence Precinct in the north, both documented by the Commonwealth and the South Australian government. Read those, then draw your own conclusions.
We do not publish a suburb shortlist, and we do not publish suburb medians or yields. Naming "the best suburbs" is a recommendation, and attaching figures we cannot source and date makes it a recommendation built on numbers nobody can check. The suburb section on this page is descriptive — where these areas are and what is in them — and deliberately nothing more. For a property you are actually looking at, Virtual Buyers Agent shows the feasibility with the arithmetic visible.
It depends on the price, and the brackets above let you work it out — on a $750,000 purchase the duty comes to $35,080. There are no first home buyer concessions for investment properties, and a foreign ownership surcharge applies on top for foreign purchasers. Virtual Buyers Agent's Stamp Duty Calculator estimates the amount for any SA purchase price, and RevenueSA is the authority to check it against.
Once you have a specific property
Bring the properties you are weighing up into one place. The listing, your numbers, the documents and the next thing worth checking stay attached to the property they belong to.
General information only — not financial, legal, tax, or investment advice. Virtual Buyers Agent does not hold an AFSL or a real estate licence. Check your circumstances with appropriately licensed professionals before acting.
This page publishes no Adelaide price, yield or growth figure, and nothing on it is a recommendation about a suburb, a property or a time to buy.