NSW first home buyers
NSW First Home Owner Grant
The First Home Owner Grant is a one-off payment of $10,000 from the New South Wales Government to eligible first home buyers who buy or build a new home, an off-the-plan home, or a substantially renovated home never lived in.
Your Mortgage Broker Croydon(/) is a mortgage broking practice serving Croydon and the Inner West, and the grant interacts directly with lending decisions around deposits and duty. This page sets out the current amounts, the eligibility tests, the property caps, how the grant stacks with stamp duty relief, and the application process.
What It Is Worth Right Now
The confirmed figure may surprise buyers who have read older articles: the grant is worth [$10,000], paid once per transaction and once per applicant in a lifetime. A $30,000 amount still circulates on third-party sites and in dated articles, and it cannot be verified against any current government source, so treat anything quoting it as stale. The 2026-27 NSW Budget, handed down on 23 June 2026, made no changes to the grant amount or the value caps, which means the figures on this page reflect the scheme as it stands. Worth $10,000 on its own, the grant matters more in combination: paired with the duty relief available under a separate scheme, the combined effect on upfront cash at settlement is often what makes a first purchase workable, particularly for buyers whose deposit sits just short of where a lender wants it.
Who Qualifies
Eligibility turns on the applicants and their history, not just the property. The tests below come from Revenue NSW, and all of them must be met at the relevant date:
Natural persons only
Citizenship or residency
No prior ownership
One grant per lifetime
Occupancy undertaking
Genuine first purchase intent
Which Properties It Covers
The property tests are where most confusion sits, because the grant and the duty relief scheme draw the line in different places. This table compares how each scheme treats a purchase:
| Property situation | First Home Owner Grant | Duty relief scheme |
|---|---|---|
| New home, home and land under one contract | Eligible up to a $600,000 cap | Full exemption up to $800,000, concession tapering to $1,000,000 |
| Vacant land plus separate building contract | Eligible on combined value up to $750,000 | Full land exemption up to $350,000, concession to $450,000 |
| Off-the-plan purchase of a new dwelling | Eligible within the value cap | Eligible within the same thresholds |
| Substantially renovated home, never lived in or sold since | Eligible within the value cap | Eligible within the same thresholds |
| Established home previously lived in or sold | Not eligible at any price | Eligible within the same thresholds |
The table's last two rows carry the practical message: an established home can still attract meaningful duty relief, while a new home sitting under both sets of thresholds can attract the grant and the relief together.
Why The Rule Bites Here
The new-home test collides with Croydon's housing stock in a way that changes how a local first home buyer should search. The suburb is an Inner West village of Federation homes and California Bungalows, particularly across the heritage-listed Malvern Hill Estate subdivided in 1909, and that character is precisely what the grant does not touch.
Where new stock sits
Only 173 dwellings were approved across Croydon in the last five years, and building activity sits around the middle of the state percentile range, so genuinely new, never-lived-in stock is thin on the ground. What does appear is mostly apartment and unit development, consistent with the twenty-seven per cent of local dwellings that are already flats, rather than new detached houses.
The cap versus Croydon
A $600,000 combined cap is tight for a suburb where the median household already carries a mortgage repayment of about $2,700 a month and household incomes sit at the seventy-ninth state percentile. Buyers chasing a grant-eligible purchase here are realistically looking at new or off-the-plan units rather than houses, and likely toward the edges of the suburb.
The eligible-desirable gap
This is the friction worth naming plainly: the stock that qualifies for the grant, new units near the rail corridor and arterial roads, is often not the stock buyers came to Croydon for, namely a double-brick bungalow near Centenary Park or The Strand. The established homes that draw people to the suburb qualify for duty relief only, never the grant.
What it means for the search
A practical search around Croydon splits in two. Buyers set on the grant need to watch off-the-plan releases and substantially renovated stock, and accept a unit. Buyers set on a Federation house should price the duty relief instead, and adjust their deposit plan around the duty they will still pay, which is where lending structure and the first home buyer pathway start to matter more than the grant itself.
How It Stacks With Duty Relief
The grant and the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme are separate programs with separate tests, and understanding the overlap changes what a buyer offers on. The key points:
Both can apply to one purchase
The duty scheme reaches further up the market
Established homes get relief without the grant
Vacant land has its own bands
Current thresholds date from mid-2023
How it works
How To Apply And When Money Arrives
Applications run through an approved agent or directly to Revenue NSW, and the timing depends on the purchase stage. The process is document-driven, so preparation matters more than speed:
- 1
Where to lodge
Most buyers lodge through an approved bank or lender acting as agent for Revenue NSW, usually at the same time as the home loan application. Where the chosen lender is not an approved agent, the application goes directly to Revenue NSW instead, which adds handling time the buyer should plan around.
- 2
When the money lands
A completed home ready to occupy is generally paid at settlement, which is when it counts most against upfront costs. An off-the-plan purchase is also paid at settlement, but that settlement can sit well beyond the contract date depending on developer completion, so budget for the wait between exchange and payment.
- 3
If you are building
Under a construction contract the grant is typically paid once the first progress payment is made to the builder, not at the end of the build. That timing matters for cash flow, because early build stages are usually the most demanding on working funds and the grant arrives before the heaviest drawdowns.
- 4
What to have ready
Lodgement needs identity documents, the contract of sale or building contract, and evidence of citizenship or permanent residency for the qualifying applicant. Incomplete documentation at lodgement is one of the most common reasons applications stall, so assembling the set before signing avoids a scramble later in an already compressed settlement window.
Worth knowing early
What Gets An Application Knocked Back
Revenue NSW publishes the recurring failure modes, and each one is avoidable with a check before the contract is signed rather than after:
- Wrong property type Assuming any first home purchase qualifies, without checking the new-home test, is the single most common error, because the established homes most buyers actually want are outside the grant entirely at any price.
- Missing the occupancy window Not moving in within twelve months, or moving out before completing twelve months of continuous residence, puts the grant in clawback territory for contracts from 1 July 2023 onward.
- Hidden prior ownership A partner who briefly co-owned property interstate, or an applicant named on a title years ago, disqualifies the application even when the buyer genuinely thought of themselves as a first home buyer at the time of purchase.
- Wrong applicant structure Applying through a company or discretionary trust rather than as natural persons fails the applicant test outright, and re-papering title after exchange is expensive and sometimes impossible.
- Price just over the cap A contract price marginally above $600,000 or $750,000 disqualifies the whole application; the grant does not reduce pro rata, so negotiate with the cap in view.
- Incomplete documents Missing identity, contract or citizenship evidence at lodgement delays or derails processing, which is avoidable with a pre-lodgement checklist.
Where we work
Areas We Service
From Croydon we work with first home buyers and homeowners across the Inner West, including Five Dock, Haberfield, Ashfield, Ashbury, Croydon Park and Burwood Heights. Grant eligibility interacts with deposit size, duty planning and lender policy differently in each of those markets, so the conversation usually starts with the property type the buyer is actually chasing.
Questions answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the NSW First Home Owner Grant worth?
The grant pays a one-off $10,000 to eligible first home buyers purchasing or building a qualifying new home in New South Wales. The amount and the value caps were left unchanged in the 2026-27 NSW Budget.
Can I get the grant on an established home?
No. An established home that has been previously lived in or sold is not eligible for the grant at any price, even though it may still qualify for stamp duty relief under the separate assistance scheme.
What is the property price cap for the grant?
For a home and land bought under one contract the cap is $600,000. For vacant land with a separate building contract the combined value cap is $750,000. Going over the cap disqualifies the application entirely.
Do I have to live in the property to keep the grant?
Yes. For contracts from 1 July 2023 you must move in within twelve months of settlement or completion and live there continuously as your main residence for at least twelve months.
Is the grant different from stamp duty relief?
Yes, they are separate schemes. The grant applies to new homes only, while the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme covers new and established homes, with a full duty exemption up to $800,000.
How long does the grant take to arrive?
A completed home is generally paid at settlement, and an off-the-plan purchase at its later settlement. Under a construction contract payment typically follows the first progress payment to the builder.
Mortgage broker for Croydon and the suburbs around it
Get In Touch
If you are weighing a grant-eligible purchase against an established home in Croydon, the lending structure and the duty position deserve to be worked out together before you bid. Call (02) 9072 0666 for a no-obligation conversation. You can read more about who you would be dealing with, and every figure on this site traces to a published source or a stated worked example.