Federal First Home Buyer Scheme Changes

There are five first home buyer schemes available in Victoria right now. They have different rules, different caps, and different definitions of what a first home buyer even is.

Two of them changed materially in the last year, and one is brand new.

Most people use one, usually whichever one they happened to hear about first. Here's all five, and which ones work together.

The First Home Guarantee changed in October 2025

This is the big one, and the change was bigger than most coverage suggested.

You buy with a 5% deposit and you pay no Lenders Mortgage Insurance. The government guarantees up to 15% of the value on your behalf, so the lender treats you as a 20% borrower.

From October 2025, the income caps were removed. The place limits were removed too, so it's no longer a race to claim one of a fixed number of spots each year.

The property price cap is $950,000 across Melbourne and Geelong, and $650,000 for regional Victoria.

If someone told you eighteen months ago that you earned too much, or that the places had run out, that advice is now out of date.

Victorian stamp duty

You pay nothing up to $600,000 as a first home buyer.

From $600,000 to $750,000 there's a sliding concession, and above $750,000 you pay the standard rate.

Your conveyancer claims it at settlement. There's no separate application.

The First Home Owner Grant

$10,000, and this is where people get caught: it's new homes only, valued at $750,000 or less.

If you're buying an established house anywhere in Melbourne's west, this one isn't yours, no matter how first-time a buyer you are.

If you're looking at house and land in a growth corridor, it might be.

The First Home Super Saver Scheme

You make voluntary contributions into super, then release them later for a first home deposit. The benefit is the tax rate you save at, not a government top-up.

The cap is $50,000 per person across your lifetime, with up to $15,000 counted from any single financial year. For a couple that's up to $100,000 plus earnings.

The catch is timing. You have to make the contributions first, then apply to the ATO for a determination, then for a release. That takes weeks.

So it's a twelve to eighteen month strategy. If you're buying next month it won't help you.

Help to Buy, live since December 2025

The newest one, and the one with the real trade off.

You go in with a 2% deposit. The government takes an equity share in return, up to 30% on an existing home and up to 40% on a new one. There are 10,000 places a year and the program runs four years.

That equity share isn't a loan you pay down. When you sell, or when you buy the government out, they take their percentage of what the property is worth then, not what you paid.

For some buyers it's the only thing that makes a purchase possible, and that's a legitimate answer. Just go in understanding it's a trade rather than a gift.

Which ones stack

Most of them do, and this is the part that changes what you can afford rather than just whether you qualify.

You can use the First Home Guarantee, the Victorian stamp duty exemption, and your First Home Super Saver money on the same purchase.

What you can't sensibly do is work the combination out in your head. Each scheme has its own caps, its own eligibility test, and its own timing, and some combinations interact in ways worth checking case by case.

The free scheme checker on this site asks a few questions and tells you which of the five apply to you.

Let's get you into a home.