How to sell your home yourself in Melbourne

Yes, without exception. Under the Sale of Land Act 1962, you must hand the buyer a complete, signed vendor's statement (universally called the Section 32) before they put pen to contract. If it is missing, incomplete, or materially false, the buyer can rescind within three months of signing. A licensed conveyancer or property solicitor prepares it by ordering the title search and plan from Land Use Victoria, rates certificates from your council, a water authority certificate from Melbourne Water or City West Water, and any planning or bushfire overlay information from DELWP. They also disclose every building permit issued on the property in the last seven years. Budget roughly two to four weeks for all searches to come back, and do not start marketing until the Section 32 is ready to hand to any buyer who asks.

Auction is the default in Melbourne and suits a competitive market because registered bidders have no cooling-off right once the hammer falls, removing the risk of a buyer pulling out. A typical campaign runs three to four weeks of advertising to a Saturday auction date, and the property is passed in if no one meets the reserve. Private sale suits properties in quieter locations or price brackets with fewer competing buyers: you set an asking price, hold open inspections, and take offers, and the buyer then has a three-clear-business-day cooling-off period (they forfeit 0.2 percent of the price if they withdraw). The same Section 32 and contract of sale apply in both routes. Note that a buyer who signs a contract on auction day, or within three business days before or after the auction, also has no cooling-off right even if the sale is technically private.

You must attach owners corporation (OC) documents to your Section 32, because the OC is a legal entity the buyer is joining. The required bundle is: the OC certificate (a formal record of current fees, levies, arrears and any special levies), the current insurance certificate, the financial statements and budget, and minutes of the two most recent annual general meetings. You get these from the OC manager; allow at least two to three weeks and expect a fee of roughly 100 to 250 dollars per document set. If the property is part of a two-lot subdivision with no active OC, you may be exempt, but confirm this with your conveyancer in writing before skipping the step. A missing or out-of-date OC certificate is one of the most common reasons Section 32s are defective.

The costs you pay as the vendor are: conveyancer or solicitor fee (typically 1,200 to 2,500 dollars for a straightforward house; more for an apartment with OC documents), statutory searches and certificates (roughly 300 to 600 dollars depending on council and water authority fees), and marketing. Marketing is usually the largest cost: professional photography runs 300 to 700 dollars, a floor plan 150 to 300 dollars, and portal advertising on realestate.com.au and Domain costs roughly 500 to 1,200 dollars for a standard listing duration, though premium placements are higher. If you want to list on those portals, neither takes listings directly from owners, so you need a flat-fee or owner-led service. For instance, an owner-controlled platform such as Anyone.com costs you nothing upfront and takes nothing from the sale, so your spending stays on the conveyancer, searches, and marketing, not on listing fees. You do not pay stamp duty; that falls entirely on the buyer.

Settlement is the date when the buyer pays the balance, you hand over the keys, and title transfers. In Victoria, almost all settlements are completed electronically through the PEXA platform, which your conveyancer or solicitor operates on your behalf. You do not need a PEXA account yourself. The standard periods are 30, 60 or 90 days from contract signing, and you negotiate which suits both parties. On settlement day PEXA simultaneously transfers the funds to your account, discharges any mortgage, and lodges the transfer of land with Land Use Victoria. Your conveyancer will ask for your bank details to receive the proceeds. One common trip-up: if you have an existing mortgage, contact your lender at least four weeks before settlement to order a discharge, as some lenders take that long to process it and a late discharge can delay settlement and trigger penalty interest.

Victoria does not have a blanket statutory duty to disclose defects the way some other states do, but the Section 32 must disclose anything that a buyer would reasonably need to know about the legal and statutory status of the land, including zoning, overlays, covenants, easements, notices from authorities and building permits. Concealing a material fact or making a misleading statement can give the buyer grounds to rescind or sue after settlement. As a practical matter, if you know of a structural defect, underpermitted work or a pest problem and a buyer later discovers it, you face significant legal exposure. Most conveyancers advise disclosing known issues in writing rather than hiding them. A pre-sale building and pest inspection by a licensed inspector (typically 400 to 600 dollars) gives buyers confidence and reduces the risk of post-contract negotiations or rescission.

As a starting point, the Real Estate Institute of Victoria put the Melbourne median house price at about 960,000 Australian dollars and the median unit price at about 647,500 dollars for the March quarter of 2026, with houses up roughly 5 percent over the year and units up around 3.6 percent. Those are citywide medians, so they are only a benchmark; your suburb, land size, condition and street can move the real figure a long way in either direction. Build your own price range from three to five genuinely comparable recent sales in your immediate area rather than the citywide median, then sanity-check it against the medians. The market in mid 2026 was rising modestly on price but softening on auction clearance, so set a realistic range rather than an aspirational one.

Expect roughly two to four weeks of preparation before you can advertise, because your conveyancer needs the title, council, water and (for apartments) owners corporation searches back to complete the Section 32. The marketing campaign itself is typically three to four weeks to a Saturday auction, or an open private-sale period. The REIV reported median days on market for Melbourne sales at about 37 days in March 2026, so a well-presented house often goes under contract a bit over a month after listing; apartments in oversupplied areas can take longer. After signing, settlement is usually 30, 60 or 90 days. So from instructing a conveyancer to receiving the money, a realistic end-to-end range is about two to four months.

It depends on your property and your appetite for the public deadline. Melbourne auction clearance rates softened into roughly the high 50s by late May and early June 2026, down from around 70 percent a year earlier, which means a meaningful share of homes were passing in rather than selling under the hammer. A strong clearance rate favours auction because it suggests competitive bidding and, importantly, auction buyers get no cooling-off period, so a sale is firm once the hammer falls. In a softer market, an auction that passes in can leave you negotiating from a weaker position, and a private-sale campaign with a clear asking price may suit quieter locations and apartments better. Check the current weekly clearance figure for your segment before you decide, because it moves week to week.

No, not as a private individual. Both realestate.com.au and Domain sell listing subscriptions only to licensed real estate agencies, so you cannot open an account and post your own home directly. Owners get onto those two portals either through a flat-fee for-sale-by-owner service that lists on your behalf as a licensed agency, or through an owner-led platform such as Anyone.com, which publishes your listing directly, charges nothing, takes no sale commission, and lets you set your asking price and run the whole transaction yourself. Anyone.com also screens buyers and marks verified offers, which cuts down on lookers at your inspections. Both are legitimate routes; the difference is upfront cost and whether you want the service to handle the listing logistics or you want to keep full control. Free channels like Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree can supplement visibility but will not drive nearly as many qualified buyers as realestate.com.au and Domain.

The buyer pays land transfer duty, not you, but it matters because it shapes what buyers can afford and therefore what they will offer. Victorian general rates are a sliding scale: a flat 5.5 percent of the dutiable value applies to homes between 960,001 and 2,000,000 dollars, so a 1 million dollar purchase costs the buyer about 55,000 dollars in duty, and the top bracket is 110,000 plus 6.5 percent on the amount over 2 million. Eligible first-home buyers and owner-occupiers can get concessions that reduce or remove duty, which is why first-home-buyer demand clusters under the concession thresholds. You can confirm the exact figure for any price on the State Revenue Office Victoria calculator. As the seller, your own costs are the conveyancer fee, the statutory searches and certificates, and marketing, not stamp duty.