NSW first home buyers
NSW First Home Owner Grant
The NSW First Home Owner Grant is a one-off payment of $10,000 from the NSW Government to eligible first home buyers who buy or build a new home, an off-the-plan home or a substantially renovated home that has never been lived in or sold since the renovation.
This page sets out what the grant pays, who qualifies, the value caps that shape your search, and how it interacts with the separate stamp duty relief scheme. The team at Your Mortgage Broker Croydon Park has pulled the figures together from Revenue NSW and connected them to what is actually being built around Croydon Park.
What It Is Worth Right Now
The surprising fact about this grant is how small it has quietly become while older articles keep shouting a bigger number. The confirmed payment is a one-off $10,000, and it has sat at that level for years. Some third-party sites and dated articles still quote $30,000, a figure that cannot be verified against any current government source and has not applied for a long time. If you budget around the wrong number, the gap comes out of your deposit at the worst possible moment, so treat $10,000 as the ceiling and plan on the Revenue NSW grant page being the only source worth trusting. The 2026-27 NSW Budget, handed down on 23 June 2026, made no change to the grant amount or the caps, so the scheme you read about today is the scheme that will greet your contract.
Who Qualifies
Eligibility is a checklist, not a vibe, and Revenue NSW tests every item of it at lodgement. If any single line below fails, the application fails with it, so run through the list before you fall in love with a property:
New or substantially renovated
First ownership anywhere
Natural persons only
Citizenship at the right moment
The occupancy commitment
Once in a lifetime
Which Properties It Covers
The value caps are where most searches go wrong, because the cap depends entirely on how the contract is structured. This table shows the two routes and what each one allows:
| Purchase structure | What counts toward the cap | Value cap | Established home? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home and land under one contract | The total contract price, home plus land | $600,000 | Never eligible |
| Vacant land plus a separate building contract | The land price and the building contract, combined | $750,000 | Never eligible |
| Substantially renovated home | The contract price for the renovated property | Within the same caps | No, if previously lived in or sold |
Notice the second row: buying land and building separately buys you $150,000 of extra headroom compared with a single house-and-land contract. For buyers priced out of the first row, that structural difference is often the difference between claiming the grant and missing it by a margin.
Why The Rule Bites Here
A statewide grant reads differently when you hold it against the actual stock in one suburb, and Croydon Park is a textbook case. The grant's caps, the suburb's housing mix and the building pipeline interact in ways that change what a first home buyer should be looking at:
The Established Stock Problem
Croydon Park's housing is dominated by established stock, with about 47.5 per cent of dwellings separate houses and 24 per cent flats or apartments, so the older homes a buyer browses around local streetscapes almost never qualify for the grant.
Where Eligible Stock Actually Sits
The eligible new supply is the apartment and townhouse pipeline, and this suburb has a genuine one, with 386 dwelling approvals over five years and a building-activity percentile of 76 across the state, concentrated around newer development near the station.
The Gap Between Eligible and Desirable
Here sits the uncomfortable truth for buyers: a new apartment off the plan satisfies the scheme while the established three-bedroom house down the road does not at any price, and buyers who accept that trade-off tend to buy, not stall.
What This Means For Your Search
Run the search in two lanes from the outset: grant-eligible new stock, where the payment and the duty relief both land, and established stock, where only duty relief applies and the deposit maths changes, a decision made before you inspect.
How It Stacks With Duty Relief
The grant is only half the support available, and the half most buyers understand least. The First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme is a separate scheme run by the same office, with different property rules and higher thresholds, and stacking them correctly is where real money sits:
Different property rules
A full exemption up to a point
A taper above that
Land has its own bands
Both schemes at once
No changes in the budget
How it works
How To Apply And When Money Arrives
The application is a paperwork exercise with a timing trap built in: the money does not always arrive when you expect it, and the payment point depends entirely on what stage your purchase is at. Four things to know before you lodge:
- 1
Lodging Through A Lender
Most buyers lodge through an approved bank or lender acting as agent for Revenue NSW alongside the loan application, which ties the grant neatly to settlement, while applications where no approved agent exists go directly to Revenue NSW itself instead.
- 2
Payment At Settlement
For a home built and ready to occupy, the grant is generally paid at settlement, which is the cleanest timing of the available routes, because the money arrives alongside the transaction and can be treated as part of settlement funds.
- 3
Off-The-Plan Timing
An off-the-plan purchase is also paid at settlement, yet settlement can sit well beyond the contract date depending on developer completion, which means a buyer signing today may wait years for the payment and the deposit cannot lean on it.
- 4
Payment During A Build
Under a construction contract the grant is typically paid once the first progress payment goes to the builder rather than at the end, a detail that matters when structuring a construction loan and timing stage against cash flow.
Worth knowing early
What Gets An Application Knocked Back
The knock-back list is predictable, which is the frustrating part: every rejection on it was avoidable with one more check before lodgement. Revenue NSW publishes the rules, applicants still trip over the same ones, and a declined application rarely gets a second chance on the same transaction. Watch for these:
- Wrong property type Assuming any first home purchase qualifies, rather than checking the new-home test, is the most common error and the most final one.
- Missing the occupancy window Not moving in within 12 months, or moving out before completing 12 months of continuous residence, puts the grant in dispute.
- Prior ownership anywhere An applicant or their partner having owned residential property anywhere in Australia, even briefly or interstate, disqualifies the application.
- The wrong applicant structure Applying as a company or trust rather than as natural people fails on eligibility, whatever the property.
- A price marginally over the cap A contract even slightly above $600,000 or $750,000 disqualifies the whole application; it does not reduce the grant.
- Incomplete documents Missing identity, contract or citizenship evidence at lodgement stalls or sinks the claim, so assemble the file before you sign.
Where we work
Areas We Service
Your Mortgage Broker Croydon Park works with first home buyers and other borrowers across the inner west and Canterbury-Bankstown, and each neighbouring suburb has its own page with local lending detail: Burwood Heights, Croydon, Ashfield, Ashbury, Campsie and Belfield. Where the purchase side of the equation needs thinking through, the first home buyer lending page covers how deposits, guarantees and structure come together.
Questions answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the NSW First Home Owner Grant worth?
The grant pays $10,000 once per eligible transaction. It has held that amount for years, and the 2026-27 NSW Budget made no change to it, so any figure you see above $10,000 is out of date.
Can I get the grant on an established home?
No. The grant only covers new homes, off-the-plan purchases and substantially renovated homes that have never been lived in or sold since the renovation. Established homes miss out entirely, whatever the price.
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 cap is $750,000. A price even marginally over the cap disqualifies the whole application.
Do I have to live in the property to keep the grant?
Yes. For contracts from 1 July 2023 you must move in within 12 months of settlement or completion and live there continuously as your main residence for at least 12 months.
Is the grant different from stamp duty relief?
Yes, they are separate schemes. The grant covers new homes only, while the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme covers new and established homes and can deliver a full duty exemption up to $800,000.
How long does the grant take to arrive?
For a completed home it is generally paid at settlement. For a build it is typically paid once the first progress payment goes to the builder, and for off-the-plan purchases at settlement, which can be years away.
Mortgage broker for Croydon Park and the suburbs around it
Get In Touch
If you are weighing up whether the grant, the duty relief or both apply to a property you have found, a short conversation settles it. Call (02) 9072 0666 to talk it through with a broker, read more about the practice on the About page, or book a time online. No fee for the first session, a published fee and commission structure, and a process with real timelines you can hold us to.