Australia Increases First Time Buyers Grant

First time house buyers in Australia are to be helped onto the housing ladder with an increased home grant.

The Australian Government has doubled the first home buyers grant to $14,000 for those who buy an established home and tripled it to $21,000 for those who buy a newly built home.

The grant is available to anyone buying a home in Australia for the first time and so is available to new arrivals provided they have permanent residence in the country. The higher grants will be available for all contracts signed before June 30, 2009.

The government estimates that more than 150,000 first home buyers will benefit from the increased grants.

Prime Minister Rudd said the stimulus package “is designed to support activity in the housing sector because the housing sector is critical to the economy”.

Australia is better placed than most developed economies to weather the current financial storm and Mr Rudd commented that it was time to spend part of the federal government’s $21.7 billion budget surplus.

“The purpose of a surplus in the budget is to cope with tough times… therefore the government intends to deploy this surplus in the ways in which I have just described.”

The complete new financial package consists of:

$4.8 billion in payments to pensioners.
$3.9 billion in payments for families.
$1.5 billion in payments to first home buyers.
$187 million for an estimated 56,000 new training places.