A brilliant initiative announced by the Federal Government to stimulate the building industry during COVID to create/retain jobs, which has been completely botched by the State Governments (State Revenue/Land Titles Offices) in the implementation/administration phase.
Firstly, for a limited time scheme announced prior to and commencing on June 4 (and ending December 31), it took the States weeks/months to announce how you could actually apply for it and how it was going to be administered. Secondly, to only be paid at slab stage of construction means that (as at today) it cannot be used towards the deposit on a new property.
So in effect, the only people who can actually access it (with a few exceptions) are people that already have that $25k, and thus don’t actually need the $25k HomeBuilder grant to build a house (it’s just a bonus). So ... most of the people making use of the HomeBuilder Scheme and building new houses are the ones who could already afford to do it prior to the grant being announced, so the grant doesn’t really stimulate the building industry much at all as most of the people who want to use the grant (towards a deposit on a new home) can’t!
As I said, complete botch job. If it were administered the same as the First Home Owners Grant (paid to lender at land settlement), we wouldn’t have a problem and there would be heaps more new builds (actually achieving the federal government’s original desired result).
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