VIC first home buyers
VIC First Home Owner Grant: A Bacchus Marsh Buyer's Guide
The Victorian First Home Owner Grant is a one-off payment of $10,000 from the Victorian Government to eligible first home buyers who purchase or build a new home in Victoria. It is administered by the State Revenue Office and does not apply to established homes.
This page explains the grant as it stands in September 2026, with every figure linked to the State Revenue Office, and then connects the rules to the Bacchus Marsh market, where new estate stock shapes what first buyers can actually claim. Your Mortgage Broker Bacchus Marsh arranges finance across Bacchus Marsh and the Moorabool district, and the page covers eligibility, property types, duty relief, applications and the mistakes that get claims refused.
What It Is Worth Right Now
The grant pays a flat 10,000 dollars, once, on every eligible transaction across Victoria. That surprises many buyers because an older, more generous regional scheme used to pay a higher amount outside Melbourne, and a lot of online advice still quotes it. That regional scheme is closed. It does not apply to current contracts, and any page telling you otherwise is out of date. The single statewide amount is the only figure that matters now, and it sits alongside a separate duty relief scheme with its own thresholds, which we unpack further down. Read the two schemes as distinct questions: the grant asks what you are buying, and duty relief asks what you are paying.
Who Qualifies
Eligibility turns on the applicants, their history and their intentions for the home, not just the property itself. The State Revenue Office sets each test out on its eligibility page, and every one of the following must be satisfied:
Natural persons only
Citizenship or residency
A genuine first-timer household
A new home, not an established one
Occupancy you actually meet
The value cap
Which Properties It Covers
The fastest way to check a property is to match it against the categories the State Revenue Office actually funds, summarised here from the grant overview:
| Property type | Grant eligible | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| New house, townhouse, apartment or unit, never sold or occupied | Yes | Must not have been leased or used for short-stay accommodation |
| Substantially renovated home | Yes | Renovation must have created a new, improved building |
| Home built to replace a demolished one | Yes | Treated as a new home for the scheme |
| Off-the-plan purchase | Yes | Cap tested on the contract price |
| Established home, any price | No | Duty relief may still apply instead |
That last row is the one worth staring at. Plenty of Bacchus Marsh buyers find a well-priced established house in Darley or Maddingley and assume the grant travels with any first purchase. It does not. The established home route runs entirely through the duty schemes, and the maths still works there, just through a different doorway.
Why The Rule Bites Here
The cap and the local market
The $750,000 cap is not a ceiling that Bacchus Marsh buyers brush against on every street, but it is tight enough to matter. This is a town where most buyers are paying down real mortgages, with about 37 per cent of dwellings being purchased and a median household repayment of around $1,700 a month, so price bands below the cap hold most of the first-buyer stock. The constraint bites not at the median but at the margins: larger four-bedroom homes on newer estate allotments, or anything with land attached, can clear the cap and take the grant off the table.
Where the eligible stock sits
Here is the good news buried in the census and approvals data: roughly 84 per cent of local dwellings are separate houses and only about 2 per cent are flats, and the town recorded 1,711 dwelling approvals over the past five years, running in the ninety-fifth percentile of Victorian building activity. That pipeline is concentrated in the new estates spreading through Maddingley and toward Parwan, and estate stock is exactly the category the grant rewards: newly built, never sold, never occupied. A first buyer shopping the estates is shopping the eligible category by default.
The gap between eligible and desirable
The awkward part is that grant-eligible and genuinely desirable are not the same shortlist. New estate releases cluster at price points that test the cap as the market moves, and the established homes closer to the town centre, with mature gardens and larger blocks, are locked out of the grant entirely. Buyers sometimes stretch toward the top of their budget to reach a new build near the cap, when a cheaper established home with the duty exemption attached would cost less overall. The grant is a benefit, not a reason to overpay.
What this means for your search
Practically, a Bacchus Marsh first buyer should run two parallel searches. The first targets new builds and off-the-plan lots under the cap, where the $10,000 and potentially full duty relief stack together. The second targets established homes under $600,000, where the duty exemption does its heaviest lifting even though the grant is absent. Which of the two comes out ahead depends on the specific prices and the duty payable on the day, which is exactly the arithmetic worth doing on paper before an auction date forces your hand.
How It Stacks With Duty Relief
The duty scheme is a separate program run by the same office, with its own eligibility rules and thresholds, and understanding the overlap changes which property you chase:
Two schemes, two thresholds
New home under $600,000
New home between $600,001 and $750,000
Established home under $750,000
Vacant land counts
Once each
Because the two schemes use different dollar thresholds, the property you choose decides the outcome, not the paperwork. A buyer at $590,000 sits in a very different position from one at $620,000, and neither figure appears in the marketing for the estates, so it pays to have both schemes modelled before you commit to a lot.
How it works
How To Apply And When Money Arrives
- 1
Choose your lodgement route
Most applicants lodge through an approved agent, which in practice means their lender handles the paperwork alongside the loan application, and this is the smoothest path because the documents overlap heavily with the home loan file. You can also apply directly with the State Revenue Office. Either route reaches the same outcome, so the choice usually comes down to whether your lender offers the service.
- 2
Mind the deadline
You have 12 months from settlement, or from completion of the build, to lodge the application. Miss it and the money is gone, no matter how clean the eligibility was, so diarise the date the day settlement is booked. Owners building should note the clock starts at completion of construction, not at contract signing, which gives a long-build project some breathing room.
- 3
What happens after you lodge
The State Revenue Office does not publish fixed payment timeframes by purchase type, so be wary of any site promising dates. What the SRO confirms is that payment is made once the eligible transaction completes. For a purchase, that means around settlement; for a construction loan, the sequence runs through to the finished home, and the construction finance process runs on its own drawdown timetable alongside it.
- 4
Get the paperwork right the first time
Expect to evidence identity, citizenship or residency, the contract, and the occupancy intention, and expect the lender or the SRO to check the property has never been sold or occupied. Applications prepared cleanly move; applications with gaps sit. First home buyers working through a broker often find the grant documents fold naturally into the home loan application itself, which is the simplest way to keep the two consistent.
Worth knowing early
What Gets An Application Knocked Back
Most refusals are not bad luck; they are predictable traps that a careful buyer avoids before signing anything. These are the common ones:
- Buying established and assuming eligibility The single most frequent error: the grant does not cover established homes at any price, and discovering this after the contract is signed helps nobody.
- A "new" home with history If the property has been leased out or used for short-term accommodation before purchase, it fails the never-occupied test, so ask the question about display homes and investor stock explicitly.
- Busting the cap A contract price over $750,000 ends the claim, and for off-the-plan buyers the contract price is what counts, not the valuation on completion.
- Breaking the occupancy promise Not moving in within 12 months, or not staying 12 continuous months, puts the grant at risk, so life changes during that first year deserve a conversation before they become a breach.
- Prior ownership hiding in the household A partner who previously owned and occupied a home for six continuous months or more disqualifies the application, even where the other applicant is a clean first-timer.
- Wrong applicant structure Companies and trusts cannot apply, so buyers using family entities for other reasons need to check who is named on the contract.
- Missing the 12-month lodgement deadline An approved claim lodged late is not a claim, and the SRO does not waive the window.
Areas We Service
Your Mortgage Broker Bacchus Marsh works with first home buyers across Bacchus Marsh and the wider Moorabool district, and the grant rules apply identically in every one of these pockets: Darley, Merrimu, Hopetoun Park, Parwan, Maddingley and Pentland Hills. What changes between them is the stock mix and price bands, which is why the eligible-versus-established question plays out differently street by street, and why we look at the specific property rather than the postcode before talking thresholds.
Questions answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the VIC First Home Owner Grant worth?
The grant pays $10,000 once per eligible transaction, and the same amount applies statewide. The separate regional grant scheme is closed and does not apply to current contracts.
Can I get the grant on an established home?
No. The grant covers new homes never sold or occupied, substantially renovated homes, replacements for demolished homes and suitable off-the-plan purchases. An established home qualifies for duty relief instead.
What is the property price cap for the grant?
The home must be valued at up to $750,000. For off-the-plan contracts, the cap applies to the contract price rather than the completed value.
Do I have to live in the property to keep the grant?
Yes. At least one applicant must move in as their principal place of residence within 12 months of settlement or completion, and stay for at least 12 continuous months.
Is the grant different from stamp duty relief?
Yes, they are separate schemes with separate thresholds. The grant suits new homes only, while the duty exemption or concession can apply to new and established homes up to $750,000.
How long does the grant take to arrive?
The SRO does not publish fixed payment dates. Payment is made once the eligible transaction completes, and applications must be lodged within 12 months of settlement or construction completion.
Mortgage broker for Bacchus Marsh and the suburbs around it
Get In Touch
If you are weighing a new estate lot against an established home and want the grant and duty position modelled on real numbers, call (03) 9122 8522. You will speak with a named broker handling your file, you will see our published fee structure before you commit to anything, and you will get our process and realistic timelines in writing from the first conversation.