Average First Home Deposit by Capital City
ABS median established house prices by capital city, with the 20% benchmark deposit worked out for each — and why 20% isn't compulsory.
What is the average deposit for a first home buyer in Sydney?
There’s no ABS figure called “the average first home buyer deposit” — no government agency tracks what individual first home buyers actually hand over at settlement. What is published is the median price of established house transfers in each capital city, and a 20% share of that median works as a benchmark illustration. For Sydney, the ABS’s median price of established house transfers for the March quarter 2026 (the latest available release, preliminary) was $1,485,000. Twenty per cent of that median is $297,000 — arithmetic on the ABS figure, not a savings target or a figure any individual buyer needs to reach.
That median is the midpoint of thousands of recorded property transfers in Sydney that quarter — half sold for more, half for less. First home buyers don’t buy at the median by default, and they buy attached dwellings (units, apartments, townhouses) far more often than the headline “house price” conversation suggests. Both points matter enough that the rest of this page keeps coming back to them.
How does Sydney compare with Melbourne and the other capitals?
Melbourne’s median established house price for the same quarter was $850,000 — noticeably lower than Sydney’s, and 20% of it is $170,000. The table below runs the same two figures for every capital city, all from the same ABS series and the same quarter, so the columns are genuinely comparable.
| Capital city | ABS median established house* | ABS median attached dwelling (unit)* | 20% of house median (arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | $1,485,000 | $848,000 | $297,000 |
| Melbourne | $850,000 | $615,000 | $170,000 |
| Brisbane | $1,150,000 | $834,500 | $230,000 |
| Adelaide | $980,000 | $740,000 | $196,000 |
| Perth | $1,000,000 | $735,000 | $200,000 |
| Hobart | $740,000 | $610,000 | $148,000 |
| Darwin | $750,000 | $430,000 | $150,000 |
| Canberra | $1,071,300 | $625,000 | $214,260 |
*ABS 6432.0, Total Value of Dwellings, Table 2 — March quarter 2026, preliminary.
Sydney has the widest gap between house and unit medians of any capital: $1,485,000 against $848,000, a difference of about $637,000. Because a large share of first home buyers buy units and townhouses rather than detached houses, the unit column is often the more relevant line in this table than the house column — not a smaller version of the same story.
What exactly is this “median” figure?
“Median” and “average” (mean) are different statistics, and the ABS publishes both — as different products. The figures above are the median price of established house transfers and the median price of attached dwelling transfers: the midpoint sale price of existing (not newly built) properties and units that actually changed hands, unstratified, drawn from state and territory land registries. The same ABS release also publishes a mean price of residential dwellings — a genuine average, covering all dwellings including new builds, and published by state rather than by capital city, so it can’t fill a capital-city cell in a table like this one.
Separately, CoreLogic publishes its own median dwelling value — a modelled, hedonic estimate, and a commercial product distinct from either ABS figure. This page uses one series only, throughout: the ABS’s median established-house and attached-dwelling transfer prices, from the same release and the same quarter for every city. None of the three measures is interchangeable with either of the others.
Why doesn’t this page say whether prices are rising or falling?
Because the March quarter 2026 data this page relies on is preliminary, and by the ABS’s own account, materially incomplete. Land-registry lodgements lag, so the transfer counts behind these medians are still filling in — Sydney’s recorded established-house transfers for the quarter, for instance, sit well below a fully lodged quarter, and other capitals show similar shortfalls of up to around half. The ABS’s own methodology puts it plainly: figures for the current quarter are preliminary, and the data “should be interpreted with caution” until later revisions settle.
A partial quarter can move a median for reasons that have nothing to do with what property is actually worth, so this page reports the figures as a snapshot and doesn’t draw any trend, rise or fall from them. If you’re checking whether these numbers have since been revised, the ABS’s Total Value of Dwellings release is the place to look.
Is a 20% deposit compulsory?
No. Twenty per cent is a benchmark tied to lenders mortgage insurance (LMI): LMI is usually payable once a loan exceeds 80% of the property’s value, so a 20% deposit is the level at which LMI is usually avoided — not a legal minimum, and not a condition of buying at all. LMI itself protects the lender if a borrower defaults, not the borrower or any guarantor.
Plenty of first home buyers buy with far less than 20% down. As at July 2026, the federal Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme lets eligible first home buyers buy with a minimum 5% deposit (2% for eligible single parents or legal guardians), with Housing Australia guaranteeing part of the loan so LMI isn’t charged at all, subject to price caps that vary by state and region. A smaller deposit and a 20% deposit are both ordinary paths — neither is a failure state.
What else does a deposit leave out?
A deposit isn’t the whole amount a buyer brings to settlement. On top of it, transfer (stamp) duty, any LMI premium, conveyancing fees and building and pest inspections all typically apply, and each varies by state, property and provider — none of them is captured in the median or the 20% figure above. Our guide to how much deposit you really need and our guide to buying with a 5% deposit both go through these additional costs and the deposit-size trade-offs in more depth.
What should you weigh beyond these figures?
A few things sit alongside the raw price gap between cities and dwelling types:
- Choice of location isn’t always open — job, family and existing ties often narrow which city or region is realistic, regardless of the median gap between them.
- House versus unit changes the deposit maths — the attached-dwelling median is lower than the house median in every capital city in this table, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Scheme eligibility interacts with price caps — the 5% Deposit Scheme’s property price cap differs by state and region, so the same deposit percentage buys access to different parts of each city’s market.
Does this data say where you should buy?
No — this page compares published ABS figures across capital cities; it isn’t a recommendation to buy in one city over another, and the numbers above say nothing about a specific property, a specific buyer’s budget, or what’s realistic given someone’s job, family or lending capacity. A licensed mortgage broker or financial adviser can work through what a target city or price bracket means for your own deposit and borrowing position. Because these ABS figures are preliminary and revised quarterly, treat this page as a snapshot as at the March quarter 2026 and check the ABS’s Total Value of Dwellings release for anything published since.
