VIC first home buyers
VIC First Home Owner Grant
The First Home Owner Grant in Victoria is a one-off $10,000 payment for first home buyers who build or purchase a new home valued up to $750,000, subject to citizenship, occupancy, prior ownership and application rules administered by the State Revenue Office.
Your Mortgage Broker Keilor Downs(/) works with first home buyers across Brimbank who are weighing the grant against local prices and lending policy. This page sets out what the grant pays, who qualifies, which properties it covers, how duty relief stacks alongside it, and how the application process actually runs.
What It Is Worth Right Now
The grant pays $10,000, once, per eligible transaction. If you remember a larger figure for regional Victoria, that memory is out of date: the separate regional first home owner grant is a closed scheme that does not apply to current contracts, so there is no higher regional amount to chase. The single $10,000 figure applies statewide, whether the new home sits in Keilor Downs or Bairnsdale. That makes the grant a fixed contribution rather than a market-responsive one, and it is why the duty relief scheme, which is worth more at some price points, often matters just as much to the total cost of buying. Both schemes are administered by the State Revenue Office, and both are claimed alongside your purchase rather than separately from it.
Who Qualifies
The eligibility test is a list of conditions, and every applicant has to clear all of them:
Age and capacity
Citizenship or residency
The first home test
A new home
The value cap
Genuine occupancy
The application window
Which Properties It Covers
The property table below is where most confusion lives, because the grant and the duty relief schemes treat established homes differently:
| Property type | Grant? | Duty relief? |
|---|---|---|
| Established home, any price | No | Yes, if dutiable value is up to $750,000 |
| New home up to $600,000 | Yes | Yes, full exemption |
| New home $600,001 to $750,000 | Yes | Yes, concession on a sliding scale |
| Substantially renovated home | Yes | Treated as new or established per the SRO rules |
| Off-the-plan purchase | Yes, cap tested on contract price | Depends on dutiable value |
| Home previously leased or used for short-stay accommodation | No | Depends on dutiable value and use |
| Vacant land to build a first home | No | Yes, with its own occupancy timing |
The pattern to notice is that the two schemes overlap on new homes but do not mirror each other, and reading the SRO duty relief page alongside the grant page before you sign anything is time genuinely well spent.
Why The Rule Bites Here
A statewide rule meets a local market, and in Keilor Downs the meeting is not entirely comfortable:
The Cap Reaches Brimbank
The $750,000 cap is not the binding constraint locally, because Brimbank price points sit within its reach and the grant's real job here is helping with the deposit. With a median household repayment of about $1,733 a month against a median weekly household income near $1,558, the household budget, not the cap, is where the pressure sits, and $10,000 does real work.
Eligible Stock Is Thin
The grant only pays on new homes, and this suburb builds few of them. Only 171 dwellings were approved across the last five years, and just 29 in 2021-22, in a suburb of roughly 3,400 dwellings where about eighty five per cent are separate houses. Stock that qualifies for the grant barely exists inside the postcode itself.
The Eligible-Desirable Gap
What qualifies and what locals want are different things. Fewer than one dwelling in two hundred here is a flat or apartment, so the townhouses and apartments that typically carry the grant are rare locally, while the brick-veneer family homes buyers actually want are established and therefore ineligible. The grant pushes buyers toward product types the suburb barely produces.
What It Means Searching
Practically, a Keilor Downs buyer chasing the grant usually looks at new developments on the suburb's fringe or in nearby growth corridors, accepts a longer commute for new-build pricing, or buys established and relies on the duty relief scheme alone. There is no wrong answer, but it is a decision worth making deliberately before contracts get signed, and our first home buyer loans page covers the finance side of both routes.
How It Stacks With Duty Relief
The grant is the smaller half of the story at most price points, because the first home buyer duty exemption or concession is a separate scheme with its own thresholds:
Full exemption below $600,000
Concession from $600,001 to $750,000
Established homes still qualify for duty relief
Vacant land has its own timing
The occupancy rules mirror each other
Once only
If the deposit is the gap rather than the duty, a family guarantee or low deposit structure is the conversation to have, and the guarantor's independent legal and financial advice is not optional in that arrangement.
How it works
How To Apply And When Money Arrives
The application is procedural once eligibility is clear, and there are four stages to know:
- 1
Confirm Eligibility In Writing
Work through each condition against your own circumstances before signing the contract, not after. The citizenship, prior ownership and occupancy tests catch people who assumed the grant applied, and the SRO eligibility page is the definitive checklist to work from.
- 2
Choose The Lodgement Route
Applications go through an approved agent, which in practice means your lender, or directly to the SRO. Most buyers lodge through the lender because the paperwork rides along with the home loan application, but the direct route exists and the SRO grant overview covers both.
- 3
Mind The Deadline
The application must be lodged within twelve months of settlement, or of completion where you are building. Missing that window forfeits the payment entirely, and buyers juggling construction timelines should diary the completion date the moment it is known rather than trusting memory.
- 4
When The Payment Actually Lands
The SRO pages do not publish fixed payment dates, so no timeline can honestly be promised here; the grant is paid once the eligible transaction completes. Where the lender lodges as your agent, the payment is typically applied against your loan rather than paid to you personally, which is worth confirming before you plan around the money.
Worth knowing early
What Gets An Application Knocked Back
Rejections cluster around a handful of avoidable mistakes, and every one of them is checkable before contracts are exchanged:
- Buying established and assuming it qualifies The single most common error, because the grant's "first home" framing makes buyers assume any first purchase counts.
- A "new" home that has been lived in Properties previously leased out or used as short-term accommodation fail the never-occupied test, whatever the marketing brochure said.
- The price creeping over the cap A contract at $755,000, or an off-the-plan contract price above $750,000, disqualifies the entire application.
- Occupancy falling short Not living in the home for the full twelve continuous months, or starting occupation later than twelve months after settlement or completion, forfeits the grant.
- A partner's history A previous grant, or prior ownership by the applicant's partner, bars the application even where the applicant is a genuine first timer.
- The wrong structure Applying as a company or a trust fails the natural-persons test outright.
- A missed deadline Twelve months from settlement or completion, and no extensions for busy people.
Questions answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the VIC First Home Owner Grant worth?
Can I get the grant on an established home?
No. Established homes do not qualify at any price. The grant applies only to new homes that have never been sold or occupied, substantially renovated homes, or homes built to replace a demolished one.
What is the property price cap for the grant?
The cap is $750,000. For off-the-plan purchases the cap applies to the contract price rather than the completed value, which matters when you sign early in a development.
Do I have to live in the property to keep the grant?
Yes. At least one applicant must live in the home as their principal place of residence for at least twelve continuous months, starting within twelve months of settlement or completion of construction.
Is the grant different from stamp duty relief?
Yes. The grant and the first home buyer duty exemption or concession are separate schemes with separate thresholds, and an established home can attract duty relief even though it never attracts the grant.
How long does the grant take to arrive?
The SRO does not publish fixed payment dates; payment is made once the eligible transaction completes. Applications must be lodged within twelve months of settlement or completion of the build.
Mortgage broker for Keilor Downs and the suburbs around it
Get In Touch
If you are deciding between a new build that carries the grant and an established home that carries duty relief instead, ring (03) 9122 8521 and talk it through with Your Mortgage Broker Keilor Downs before you sign either contract. Every client deals with the broker directly, fees and commissions are disclosed in writing, and you can read about us to see how a new brokerage earns trust without history. Construction timelines, deposit strategy and lender policy all interact with the grant, and our construction loans page explains the funding side if a build is the route you take.