Helping More Australians Buy Home 9 September

Australian Treasury

The Albanese Labor Government is helping more Australians into their own home, according to Housing Australia’s latest report.

The Housing Australia Trends and Insights Report reveals that Labor’s expanded Home Guarantee Scheme helped 43,800 people – including over 11,000 key workers – to buy a home in 2023-24, a 34 per cent increase on the previous year. That brings the total number of people helped to get into their home to over 117,000 since coming to government.

Australians are doing it tough right now, that’s why we’re helping with cost of living measures, which includes helping more Australians to buy a house.

The data shows that around one‑in‑three of all first home buyers were supported by this scheme in the last financial year.

The Home Guarantee Scheme includes the First Home Guarantee, the Family Home Guarantee and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee.

Under the expanded scheme, friends, siblings, and other family members have become eligible for joint applications, as well as non‑first home buyers who haven’t owned a property in Australia in the last ten years. This expansion means an extra 16,000 people accessed the scheme in the last financial year who otherwise wouldn’t have.

The scheme was particularly well adopted across the regions and with key workers with more than 13,000 Australians taking advantage of the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee Scheme with over 11,000 key workers including teachers, nurses, aged care workers and social workers also getting assistance under the scheme.

Quotes attributable to Clare O’Neil MP, Minister for Housing and Homelessness:

“In the midst of a housing crisis Labor’s expanded Home Guarantee Scheme is helping more people into their own home. I’m particularly happy to see that nurses, social workers and aged care workers have benefitted so much from the scheme, with over a quarter of all transactions going to key workers.

“It’s a testament to the scheme’s effectiveness that 1 in 3 first homebuyers are now supported by the scheme, but it also reflects the fact that higher house prices mean more people need a leg up to buy their own home.

“That’s why it’s so important that the Coalition and the Greens political party stop blocking our Help to Buy scheme in the Senate, which will help an additional 40,000 low‑ and middle‑income Australians, including nurses, early educators and teachers, to own their home.”

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