The Albanese Government is helping more Australians into home ownership with 50,000 new places available from today under an expanded Home Guarantee Scheme.
From today, eligibility criteria for the scheme – which includes the First Home Guarantee, the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee, and the Family Home Guarantee – have been expanded.
Friends, siblings, and other family members will be eligible to jointly apply in pairs under the First Home Guarantee and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee.
Joint applications for these guarantees had previously been restricted to people that were married or in a de facto relationship, in addition to single applicants.
These guarantees have also been expanded to non‑first home buyers who haven’t owned a property in Australia in the last 10 years.
This will support those who have fallen out of homeownership, often due to financial crisis or relationship breakdown.
Eligibility will also change for the Family Home Guarantee, expanding it from single natural or adoptive parents with dependents to eligible borrowers who are single legal guardians of children such as aunts, uncles and grandparents.
Minister for Housing Julie Collins said the Government’s changes to the eligibility criteria for the Home Guarantee Scheme reflected the times.
“The Albanese Labor Government is moving to meet the times, because households have changed,” Minister Collins said.
“I encourage Australians who may be finding the deposit hurdle difficult to overcome to look at support available under the Home Guarantee Scheme.
“The Albanese Government is proud to be expanding these opportunities with 50,000 new places available from today and expanded eligibility criteria.
“Since being elected, we have already helped more than 50,000 Australians into home ownership through the Scheme.”
These changes will build on last year’s increase in the number of places available and the establishment of Albanese Government’s new Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee.
The Albanese Government’s ambitious housing agenda also includes:
- The $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the single biggest investment in social and affordable housing by a Federal Government in more than a decade, which will help build 30,000 new social and affordable homes in its first five years;
- A new $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator to deliver thousands of new social homes across Australia;
- An extra $67.5 million to states and territories to help tackle homelessness, as part of a $1.7 billion one‑year extension of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement;
- Introducing incentives to increase the supply of rental housing by improving tax arrangements for investments in build‑to‑rent accommodation;
- Increasing the Commonwealth Rent Assistance maximum payment rates by 15 per cent;
- Establishing a National Housing Accord;
- Investing $350 million to deliver an additional 10,000 affordable rental homes over five years from 2024 as part of the Accord;
- Making up to $575 million available through the National Housing Infrastructure Facility to support more social and affordable rental homes;
- Enabling an additional $2 billion in financing for more social and affordable rental housing through the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation; and
- The Help to Buy program, which will help more people buy a home sooner.