Which First Home Buyer Schemes Stack Together

You've read about the 5 per cent deposit scheme. You've read about Help to Buy. Someone mentioned the grant, and your accountant brought up super.

Now you're at the kitchen table in your Werribee rental wondering if you can have all of them at once, or whether picking one locks you out of the rest.

Some stack, some don't. Here's the map.

The five pieces on the board

• The First Home Guarantee. The federal 5 per cent deposit scheme. Buy with 5 per cent down, no LMI, no income cap, no place limit. Melbourne and Geelong price cap $950,000, regional Victoria $650,000.
• Help to Buy. The federal shared equity scheme, live since December 2025. A 2 per cent deposit, and the government takes up to 30 per cent of an existing home or 40 per cent of a new one. 10,000 places a year, with income limits.
• The First Home Owner Grant. $10,000 from Victoria for a new home valued at $750,000 or less.
• The stamp duty exemption and concession. No duty up to $600,000, a sliding concession to $750,000, on new or established.
• The First Home Super Saver Scheme. Save up to $15,000 a year and $50,000 in total per person inside super, then release it for your deposit.

The one pair that can't go together

Help to Buy and the First Home Guarantee both run through Housing Australia, and you have to choose.

The Help to Buy rules say you can't receive help from other government schemes, loans or guarantees to support the purchase. So it's one or the other.

They solve the same problem in different ways. The Guarantee keeps the whole home yours and asks for 5 per cent. Help to Buy asks for 2 per cent, takes a share of the home in return, and only opens to you if your taxable income sits under the cap.

The Help to Buy income caps were indexed on 1 July 2026. They're now $103,000 for a single applicant and $165,000 for a couple or a single parent, up from $100,000 and $160,000.

Everything else stacks on top of either one

Pick the Guarantee or pick Help to Buy. Then the Victorian pieces sit on top of whichever you chose.

The stamp duty exemption doesn't care which federal scheme you used. It only cares that you're a first home buyer, the home is under the thresholds, and you'll live in it for twelve months.

The $10,000 grant is the same. Help to Buy's own rules say you can still benefit from stamp duty concessions, grants and exemptions.

And the super saver is a way of saving, not a way of borrowing. The money it releases is simply your deposit, and that deposit can go into either federal scheme.

Working out which combination fits your income, your deposit and the home you're after is the conversation we have most. We've helped over 100 first home buyers into the market, and a fair few used three of these five at once. Book a chat and we'll lay yours out.

Two worked shapes, no names attached

Picture a couple renting in Truganina, both working full time. Combined income over the Help to Buy cap, $40,000 saved, and they want a new house and land package for $700,000.

They can't use Help to Buy. They can use the Guarantee with 5 per cent, claim the $10,000 grant because the home is new and under $750,000, and pay reduced duty under the concession.

Now picture a single buyer on $90,000 with $15,000 saved, looking at an established unit in Sunshine for $550,000.

The Guarantee needs 5 per cent, which is $27,500, so that's out of reach for now. Help to Buy needs 2 per cent, which is $11,000, and the income is under the cap. The duty exemption applies in full. No grant, because it's not new.

Same state, same year, two different stacks. The difference is income and deposit, not luck.

What none of them change

A scheme can shrink the deposit you need or the duty you pay. It can't change what a lender thinks you can afford to repay. Your income, your debts and your living costs still decide the loan size.

So work out what you can borrow first. Then pick the stack that gets that figure to a home you'd actually want to live in.

Where to start

Use the calculators on this site to see roughly where your borrowing sits and what duty looks like at the prices you're browsing. Both are free.

Then bring the numbers to a chat. We're rated 10/10 on Reviewr by over 100 customers, and putting the right pieces together is the whole job.

Let's get you into a home.

Figures verified 22 September 2026 against firsthomebuyers.gov.au (5% Deposit Scheme, Help to Buy, Help to Buy income and threshold updates 2026-27), sro.vic.gov.au (First Home Owner Grant, first home buyer duty exemption and concession) and ato.gov.au (First Home Super Saver Scheme).