Victorian Government Schemes and Concessions

This is the chapter that saves people the most money, and it's also the chapter with the most moving parts. Victoria runs its own set of schemes, the federal government runs another set, and they interact with each other in ways that aren't always obvious. None of it is automatic. In almost every case, the money only moves if you know the scheme exists and claim it properly.

Everything below is a summary for general education, correct as at September 2026. Thresholds, caps and places change with budgets, so confirm anything that matters to you with the State Revenue Office Victoria, Housing Australia or the Australian Taxation Office before relying on it. The resources hub links to all of them.

First home buyer duty exemption and concession

Stamp duty, formally transfer duty, is normally one of the biggest costs after the deposit. Eligible first home buyers buying a home they'll live in as their principal place of residence pay no duty at all when the price is $600,000 or less, and a duty that scales down on a sliding concession between $600,000 and $750,000. At $750,000 and above, standard duty applies.

The exemption is worth real money. Standard duty on a $600,000 home is well into five figures, and for eligible buyers that entire amount disappears. The main eligibility signals are that you're 18 or over, an Australian citizen or permanent resident (with some categories of visa holders treated differently), buying a home you intend to occupy as your principal place of residence, generally moving in within 12 months and living in it continuously for at least a year, and that you haven't received this exemption or an earlier first home duty concession before.

Two details catch people out. First, the property must genuinely become your home. Renting it out straight away, or buying in a company name, breaks the eligibility. Second, the claim is usually lodged by your conveyancer through the SRO's duties system, so it costs you almost nothing to get right if it's raised early, and is painful to unpick if it's discovered after settlement.

First Home Owner Grant

The First Home Owner Grant is a separate payment on top of any duty exemption. In Victoria it applies to new homes, generally properties that haven't previously been sold or occupied as a residence, including substantially renovated homes in some cases, subject to a value threshold of $750,000.

Correct as at September 2026, the grant is $10,000 for eligible new homes in Melbourne and its surrounds, and $20,000 for eligible new homes in regional Victoria, with the regional boundary defined by the SRO. Like the duty exemption, it requires the home to become your principal place of residence, with a move in within 12 months and continuous occupancy for at least a year.

In practice the grant is most relevant to buyers of new builds, house and land packages, and off the plan apartments, where the builder or developer often factors it into marketing. If someone offers you a price "including your grant", it's worth checking that you'd get the price anyway, because the grant is yours to claim through an approved agent, usually your lender, not the seller's to give away.

Victorian Homebuyer Fund

The Victorian Homebuyer Fund is a shared equity scheme. The government contributes part of the purchase price alongside your deposit and loan, and in exchange holds a percentage share of the property. Buyers can start with a deposit as low as 5 percent without paying lenders mortgage insurance, because the government's share keeps the loan to value ratio low for the lender.

The government share is capped, at the time of writing around 25 percent for Melbourne and up to 35 percent in regional Victoria, and there are income caps and property price caps that change over time. Availability of places also varies with each budget cycle, so the scheme is sometimes open and sometimes not, which is exactly the kind of thing to check with the SRO before planning around it.

The trade-off is structural: you own less of the property, the government shares in any change in value (up or down), and you can buy out the share later, either by paying it back at market value or through refinancing. For buyers whose alternative is waiting years more, the maths can be worth it. For buyers who could reach a conventional deposit soon anyway, it often isn't. It's a genuine option rather than a free lunch, and it suits some situations and not others.

Federal guarantee schemes

The federal government runs a family of guarantee schemes through Housing Australia. The headline offer: eligible first home buyers can buy with a deposit as low as 5 percent (or 2 percent for single parents under the Family Home Guarantee) without paying lenders mortgage insurance, because the government guarantees the top of the loan.

The schemes are administered through participating lenders and lenders can use a portion of their allocation, which means availability can vary by lender and month, and popular lenders sometimes exhaust their places. A mortgage broker can see which participating lenders have places available. Note also that you generally can't use a federal guarantee and the Victorian Homebuyer Fund on the same purchase, since both are schemes of last resort in their own way.

First Home Super Saver

The First Home Super Saver scheme lets you make voluntary contributions into your superannuation and later release them, plus associated earnings, to help buy a first home. Because super is taxed concessionally, the effective return on the savings can be higher than a regular savings account for many people. The annual and total caps are set by the federal government, at the time of writing $15,000 per financial year and $50,000 in total, and the release happens through the ATO with a request that needs to be made before you sign a contract, not after.

The scheme suits people with time to plan, since contributions made at the last minute give the tax benefit little room to work. It doesn't suit everyone, and money inside super has rules around it that ordinary savings don't. The ATO link in the resources hub is the definitive reference for the current caps and the release process.

The off the plan concession

Victoria has long had an off the plan concession, and it was significantly expanded in late 2024. In simplified terms, eligible buyers of off the plan homes pay duty on the land component and the value of any construction already done at the date of the contract, with the remainder, the unbuilt construction, concessioned. For a high rise apartment bought before a single slab is poured, that can mean duty close to the land share alone.

This concession stacks with the first home buyer exemption for eligible buyers, and it's a meaningful part of why off the plan apartments are marketed so heavily to first home buyers. The trade-offs of off the plan buying generally, sunset clauses, valuation risk at settlement, builder risk, are covered in Chapter 5. The duty mechanics themselves are worth confirming with your conveyancer for your specific contract.

Combining schemes

The schemes aren't mutually exclusive, and the genuinely useful combinations are worth knowing about:

• Duty exemption plus the First Home Owner Grant, when buying a new home under the relevant thresholds, is the most common stack for new builds and off the plan purchases.
• The off the plan concession plus the first home buyer exemption can apply to the same purchase, which is where the marketing of "near zero stamp duty apartments" comes from.
• A federal guarantee or the Homebuyer Fund can be combined with the duty exemption, since one helps with the deposit and the other with the duty.
• The First Home Super Saver can fund the deposit for any of the above, subject to the release timing rules.

What you generally can't do is use two deposit support schemes, like a federal guarantee and the Homebuyer Fund, on the same property, or claim a scheme whose conditions contradict another, like buying an investment property under an owner occupier requirement.

How applying actually works

Most of the paperwork is done by other people, but you need to trigger it. The duty exemption is lodged with the duty transaction, normally by your conveyancer, so raise it at your first meeting. The First Home Owner Grant goes through an approved agent, usually your lender, as part of the loan process. The federal guarantee schemes are applied for through a participating lender when you apply for the loan. Super Saver releases go through the ATO well before contract signing.

The practical takeaway: mention every scheme you might use to your broker or conveyancer at the very first conversation. The people who miss out on these concessions are rarely ineligible. They're usually people who signed first and asked questions after.