Stamp Duty Twice?

That pretty much sums it up. The only complication relates to someone mentioned earlier - that the owner seems to feel that the existing house is more valuable than it really is and thinks that someone will purchase and remodel instead of demolishing and rebuilding. So I'm unsure whether they will agree to a reasonable sales price. The folks I've spoken to so far are saying that building new may be much less expensive per sq metre than extensive renovating and so renovating is not the best strategy for this reason and a few other reasons including differences in new building codes.

 

Good point, Christina. I had forgotten about this matter. I believe that in Qld, you can get a partial home concession if you dispose within 12 months. ...but I'm told that with everything involved, it would take me around 6 months or more to get all plans, demo, permits, etc so holding off another few months might be okay as long as I can put up temporarily living in a house that's cosmetically very poor even if structuraly sound. I think the concession amounts to the difference between $350,000 x .01 (with the concession) versus $350,000 x .035 (without the concession) = $8,750, since the concession is a reduce tax rate on the first $350k of the purchase price.