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More than 150,000 Australians have been able to buy homes with lower deposits in the four years since the program was instituted.
Comprising the First Home Guarantee (FHBG), the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee (RFHBG), and the Family Home Guarantee (FHG), each program enables eligible home buyers to purchase a residence with as little as 5 per cent down under the first two schemes and 2 per cent in the latter. Buyers are able to avoid paying lenders mortgage insurance as Housing Australia guarantees the remainder of the loan, which is serviced through 33 participating lenders.
With price caps for the maximum purchase price for properties depending on the location, and home prices experiencing substantial rises over the past few years, the scheme has at times faced scrutiny for its efficacy, yet according to data from Housing Australia, it’s proving more popular than ever.
Roughly one in three first home buyers in the 12 months to March 2024 made use of the scheme, compared with one in 10 in the scheme’s first full year of operation in the 2020–21 financial year.
Of the 150,000 who have been approved for the scheme since its inception, 27,000 are key workers, including 8,800 teachers, 7,200 nurses and 1,700 emergency service workers.
Just over half – 51 per cent – of participants are women, while 55 per cent are aged under 30 when purchasing their homes.
And since eligibility criteria for the scheme was expanded in July 2023 to include permanent residents as well as co-purchasers more broadly, approximately 9,000 permanent residents have bought homes, as well as 500 siblings going in on purchasers together and 180 friends.
Housing Australia CEO Nathan Dal Bon described passing the 150,000 milestone as “significant”, and thanked the “passionate team dedicated to delivering this program with our participating lenders”.
“Together they have successfully implemented multiple scheme changes and expansions over the past four years,” he noted.
Housing Australia’s chief program officer for the Home Guarantee Scheme, Jennifer Chew, said the team behind the scheme were “honoured to have had the opportunity to help 150,000 Australians into homes”.
“Back in 2020, the first participant in the scheme was a teacher who bought their first home in regional NSW. Since then, the scheme has helped many more Australians to buy a home sooner, including the 150,000th participant, a single mother in Victoria who works in nursing.
“We look forward to continuing to work with our participating lenders and their broker networks to help many more Australians into homes,” she said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
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