In a historic move Victoria’s long standing state funded first home owner grant may be abolished as the government’s budget overhaul includes a review of current housing affordability schemes.
Following advice from Infrastructure Victoria that the first home owner grant has failed to boost housing affordability and has provided more benefits to developers than first home buyers through excessive development and inflated prices, the scheme is under review.
At present the grant offers $10K to first home buyers of newly built properties up to the value of $750K, costing the state $123.6M to June 30th 2023.
Experts suggest the first home owner grant may be replaced with a boost to the existing first home buyers stamp duty concessions and the shared equity home buyer fund, which lowers the required deposit to 5%, lowers bank mortgages and reduces lenders mortgage insurance.
While the decision is still very much part of wider discussions that are ongoing, an announcement on the government’s widespread planning overhaul is expected in September.
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