Transfer Duty When Buying Property in South Africa

When you buy property in South Africa, you (the buyer) pay transfer duty to SARS on acquiring the property. It is calculated on a sliding scale, and a home priced at R1,210,000 or below attracts no duty at all. Transfer duty is separate from the seller's capital gains tax and separate from your conveyancing and bond registration fees.

Transfer duty is levied under the Transfer Duty Act. SARS makes "the person acquiring the property", meaning the buyer, liable to pay it, and the duty must be paid within six months from the date of acquisition.

The 2026 transfer duty rates

Transfer duty runs on a 1 April to 31 March cycle, not the income-tax year of assessment. The table below is effective from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. It is identical to the table that applied from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, so there are no changes from the previous year.

Property value	Duty
R0 – R1,210,000	0%
R1,210,001 – R1,663,800	3% of the value above R1,210,000
R1,663,801 – R2,329,300	R13,614 + 6% of the value above R1,663,800
R2,329,301 – R2,994,800	R53,544 + 8% of the value above R2,329,300
R2,994,801 – R13,310,000	R106,784 + 11% of the value above R2,994,800
R13,310,001 and above	R1,241,456 + 13% of the value above R13,310,000

The duty is worked out purely on the value of the property you acquire, whatever you paid for it. The only relief built into the table is the nil band up to R1,210,000, which applies to any buyer; there is no separate first-time buyer rebate on top of it.

Worked example: a home bought for R2,500,000

Say you buy a house for R2,500,000. That value falls in the R2,329,301 – R2,994,800 band, so the duty is R53,544 plus 8% of the amount above R2,329,300.

1. Take the amount above the band floor: R2,500,000 − R2,329,300 = R170,700.
2. Apply 8% to that portion: R170,700 × 8% = R13,656.
3. Add the fixed amount for the band: R53,544 + R13,656 = R67,200.

You would pay R67,200 in transfer duty on this R2,500,000 home. That amount is due within six months of acquisition, on top of the purchase price, your bond registration costs and your conveyancing fees.

A home at or below R1,210,000 pays nothing

Buy a flat for R1,150,000 and the value sits in the first band, charged at 0%, so your transfer duty is R0. Duty only starts once the value passes R1,210,000, and even then it applies only to the portion above that figure.

When VAT applies instead

A single property sale is subject to either VAT or transfer duty, never both. Where the seller is a VAT vendor selling in the course of an enterprise, for example a developer selling a newly built unit, VAT applies instead of transfer duty, and you pay no separate transfer duty. For an ordinary sale between private owners, transfer duty is what applies.

Two other costs are easy to confuse with transfer duty, so keep them apart:

• The seller's capital gains tax. CGT is the seller's liability on the gain they made, not something you pay as the buyer. If you are the one selling, the CGT side is set out in our guide to tax on selling property or shares, and you can estimate it with the capital gains tax calculator. For a main residence versus an investment property, see capital gains tax on your house and capital gains tax on a second property.
• Conveyancing and bond registration fees. These are professional and registration charges paid to attorneys, not a tax, and they are quoted separately from transfer duty.

For SARS, "property" is defined broadly. It means land and fixtures and includes real rights in land, rights to minerals, a share or interest in a residential property company, or a share in a share-block company. Transfer duty can therefore apply even where you are acquiring an interest in a property-owning entity rather than a title deed.