What a Melbourne Buyers Agent Costs in 2026 (And Where the Hidden Charges Hide)

Full investment property acquisition — $15,800 + GST. Same fee whether the property is a $450k Frankston flat or a $1.8m Box Hill house. Includes strategy consultation, suburb analysis, on-market and off-market sourcing, due diligence, contract negotiation, and settlement coordination. Typical engagement: 6–14 weeks.

First-home buyer acquisition — $12,500 + GST. Same end-to-end service but typically a narrower brief (one or two suburbs, owner-occupier criteria) and shorter due-diligence requirements. We make this tier cheaper because the brief is genuinely smaller, not because we work less hard.

SMSF property acquisition (LRBA-compliant) — $18,500 + GST. Adds the bare-trust structuring coordination, SMSF-specialist solicitor and lender introductions, in-house asset rule review, and the additional contract complexity of an LRBA loan. SMSF properties have ~30% more contract steps than personal-name purchases; the fee reflects that.

Auction bidding only — $2,500 + GST. You source the property; we attend the auction, run the bidding strategy, hold to your maximum, and (if successful) coordinate cooling-off documents post-auction. Best for clients who already know what they want and need a professional negotiator at the auction itself.

The alternative to a flat fee is a percentage of purchase price, usually with a minimum fee attached, and a third model sits between them: an upfront retainer plus a success fee on completion. All three are legitimate and all three are used in Melbourne.

What we cannot honestly give you is a market average, because the firms that would make up that average do not publish their rates. On 31 August 2026 we opened the public websites of Cate Bakos Property, Cohen Handler, Wakelin Property Advisory, Property Mavens, National Property Buyers and Aus Property Professionals: none published a fee schedule with figures. The nearest thing to a public Melbourne percentage is Cohen Handler's own statement that buyer's agent fees generally start at one per cent and move up depending on the service type; Wakelin publishes that its fees are agreed upfront and may be flat or a percentage, and that it accepts no commissions or incentives from sellers or agents. Those are the firms' own words on their own sites, on that date. An earlier version of this page quoted specific percentage bands and minimums for the market as a whole — we could not substantiate any of them, so they are gone rather than re-sourced.

The reason we use a flat fee is structural rather than competitive. A percentage fee pays the agent more when you spend more, and there are briefs where the right recommendation is to spend less — where a $750,000 property genuinely serves the brief better than a $950,000 one. We do not think that conflict is handled badly by individual practitioners; plenty handle it well. We would simply rather it were not in the room. A tiered percentage with a cap is a real improvement on a pure percentage, and worth asking for if a percentage firm is otherwise the right fit; ask where the cap actually bites at your budget.

Whatever the model, your position on price is the same. Consumer Affairs Victoria requires an agent to inform you that commission and expenses are negotiable before you sign an authority, and to complete a rebate statement stating whether they will receive any rebate or discount. Keeping a rebate is illegal — it must be paid to you.

Conveyancer fees ($800–$2,500). Mandatory; charged separately by the lawyer or licensed conveyancer who handles your settlement. We recommend three operators we trust; you can use anyone you like.

Building & pest inspection ($600–$1,200). Booked through the conveyancer or directly. We attend the property at the same time as the inspector to walk through findings; the inspector's report is for your records.

Land transfer duty, commonly called stamp duty. A state tax payable to the State Revenue Office at settlement, calculated from the dutiable value on a sliding scale — we do not quote a range here because the correct figure for your purchase comes from the SRO's own land transfer duty calculator, which is free and linked in the sources below. Concessions and exemptions exist for first-home buyers and, in some cases, off-the-plan purchases; the SRO sets and publishes the eligibility rules.

Lender / mortgage broker fees ($0–$2,500). Most mortgage brokers are paid by the lender (so cost the buyer nothing direct); some charge an explicit fee for SMSF or low-doc loans. We don't take referral payments from any broker — when we recommend one, the recommendation is the only thing we earn from it.

Insurance — building insurance ($600/year+) is mandatory from settlement; landlord insurance ($350–$650/year) is highly recommended for investment properties.

If a buyers agent's quote includes any of the above bundled into their fee, ask them to break it out — bundled costs are the #1 way 'flat fee' agents hide pricing creep.

Our published transaction record is 345 settlements between January 2023 and September 2025, released as open data under CC-BY 4.0 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20095886). Across those 345 purchases the median gross yield after works was 5.77%, where gross yield is annual rent divided by purchase price plus works spend, before land tax, management fees, insurance, maintenance, vacancy and loan interest.

Split by strategy over the same 345 settlements and the same January 2023 – September 2025 window: the 212 purchases with a granny flat added recorded a median gross yield after works of 5.79%, the 48 rooming-house conversions 6.94%, and the 85 cosmetic-renovation-only purchases 5.16%. Those are medians of what was achieved on transactions already settled — the spread within each strategy is wide, and none of them is a projection for any individual property.

On negotiation we quote a range and not a median: savings against the initial asking price on our engagement files typically fall between $30,000 and $80,000, but asking price is not a field in the published dataset, so that range comes from our own records and is not independently reproducible from the DOI above.

The fee fails to pay for itself in two clear cases: (1) the buyer would have made a similar negotiation themselves (some experienced investors are excellent negotiators on their own); (2) the property selected has materially the same forward returns as the property the buyer would have selected without us. We can't know in advance which case yours is — but the strategy call (free) is where we try to figure that out together. If we don't think we'll add net value, we'll say so.

Does the fee scale with purchase price? (We say no — flat. If yes, ask for the formula and the cap.) Does the fee depend on whether you find me a property? (We say yes — fee is contingent on a successful purchase. If 'fee is upfront and non-refundable', that's a red flag.) Are you paid by selling agents in any way? (We say no — we explicitly refuse spotter's fees.) Does the fee include the building inspection, or is that extra? (We say extra — passed at cost.) If the engagement extends past the agreed timeline, is there an additional fee? (We say no — extension is at no extra charge until we find a property that fits the brief.)

Most operators answer these questions truthfully when asked. The risk is not being asked the question in the first place. If you take one thing from this page: ask all five questions before you sign any engagement letter, with any operator, including us.