SA first home buyers
SA First Home Owner Grant
The SA First Home Owner Grant is a one-off payment of up to $15,000 from the South Australian Government for eligible first home buyers who purchase or build a new home in the state. It is administered by RevenueSA and never applies to an established home.
This page explains what the grant covers, who qualifies, how it combines with the separate stamp duty relief for first home buyers, and what the rules mean in practice around Naracoorte, where Your Mortgage Broker Naracoorte helps first home buyers plan the whole purchase. Every figure below links to the government source.
What It Is Worth Right Now
The grant is worth up to $15,000, paid once per eligible transaction, and the surprising part for buyers who read older articles is what changed in June 2024. For contracts entered into on or after 6 June 2024, the former property value cap on the grant was removed entirely. A new home at any price can qualify, which means a buyer is no longer penalised for choosing a better build. The same reform removed the value thresholds from the separate first home buyer stamp duty relief, so an eligible buyer of a new home or vacant land pays no stamp duty at any value. Between the two schemes, a first home buyer of a new property can receive $15,000 in cash and pay nothing in transfer duty, a combination that materially changes the deposit maths. Check the current terms on the RevenueSA grant page before you sign anything, because grant rules and dates do change.
Who Qualifies
Eligibility sits with RevenueSA, and the full criteria are set out on its grant page. The practical tests most applicants need to satisfy look like this:
A first home buyer
Buying or building a new home
Age and residency requirements
An intention to live there
A contract on the right terms
An owner-builder route is possible
Which Properties It Covers
The property type decides everything, so this table sets out what qualifies and what does not under the current grant rules:
| Property type | Grant eligible | Duty relief eligible |
|---|---|---|
| New house, flat, unit, townhouse or apartment, never lived in | Yes | Yes |
| Off-the-plan purchase | Yes | Yes, for off-the-plan apartments |
| House-and-land package | Yes | Yes |
| Comprehensive building contract | Yes | Yes |
| Vacant land to build a new home | Via the build | Yes |
| Owner-built home | Yes, under owner-builder conditions | Check with RevenueSA |
| Established home, previously lived in | No | No |
The last row is the one that catches people. An established home in South Australia attracts neither the grant nor the first home buyer duty relief, no matter how much you spend or how carefully you budget.
Why The Rule Bites Here
The new-build rule meets a thin pipeline
Naracoorte recorded just 97 dwelling approvals over the last five years, sitting at the 36th percentile for building activity within South Australia. The grant only pays on new stock, so the local pipeline of eligible properties is genuinely small, and buyers competing for a handful of house-and-land packages or recent builds need to move early when one appears.
Almost no apartments, almost all houses
Roughly 93.7 per cent of Naracoorte dwellings are separate houses and the share of flats and apartments is effectively zero, which is different from the capital city picture most grant articles assume. Here, eligible new stock means new houses, townhouses on subdivided blocks or house-and-land packages on the town's fringe, not apartment off-the-plan deals.
The gap between eligible and desirable
With a population of 6,211 and a median household income of $1,373 a week, the town supports a steady upgrade market, but the newest, most desirable homes often sit just outside what a first-time budget stretches to. The removal of the value cap helps here: a higher-priced new build no longer disqualifies the grant, though it still has to pass your own borrowing assessment.
What this means for your search
A median rent of $230 a week and a median mortgage repayment of about $1,083 a month tell you owning is cheaper than renting locally once a deposit exists. Practically, your search should start with builders' current land releases and recently completed unsold stock, because those are the properties the grant and the duty relief will actually attach to.
How It Stacks With Duty Relief
The grant is only half the picture, and the other half is the first home buyer stamp duty relief, a separate scheme with its own eligibility rules:
Two schemes, one purchase
No thresholds since June 2024
Established homes miss out twice
Each scheme tests you separately
How it works
How To Apply And When Money Arrives
- 1
Let your lender lodge it
In most cases the bank or lender providing your finance lodges the grant application as an approved agent, which means the paperwork largely happens alongside your loan application rather than as a separate project. Only apply directly to RevenueSA if your lender does not offer this service, and confirm at application time that the lodgement will actually occur.
- 2
Confirm the occupancy plan
Before signing, be clear that the home will become your principal place of residence for the period RevenueSA requires, because the grant is payable on that basis and can be recovered if the condition is not met. If your circumstances might change during the required period, raise it with RevenueSA before you commit rather than after.
- 3
Know when the money lands
Payment is made once the eligible transaction completes, and RevenueSA does not publish a single fixed timeframe on its accessible pages, so the honest answer is that timing varies. For a house-and-land package or a construction contract, ask your lender how the payment is staged, because this affects how much cash you need at each milestone.
- 4
Keep your own paper trail
Even when the lender lodges everything, keep copies of your contract, your identity documents and any correspondence, and diarise a follow-up. The most frustrating knock-backs are not refusals at all but applications that were assumed to be lodged and never were.
Worth knowing early
What Gets An Application Knocked Back
Most declined applications fail on one of a short list of avoidable errors, and each one is preventable with a ten-minute check before you sign:
- Buying an established home Expecting the grant or the duty relief on a previously lived-in house is the single most common mistake, because neither scheme applies in South Australia.
- Assuming old caps still apply Articles written before June 2024 quote value caps and banded thresholds that no longer apply to new contracts, so buyers wrongly rule themselves out of high-value new homes.
- No genuine intention to live there If the property is intended as a rental or a weekend house, the occupancy condition fails and the grant is not payable.
- Assuming someone else lodged Relying on the lender to lodge the application and then discovering it never happened leaves you out of time, so confirm lodgement in writing.
Where we work
Areas We Service
Your Mortgage Broker Naracoorte works with first home buyers across Naracoorte and the surrounding districts, including Lochaber, Hynam, Mount Light, Moyhall and Stewart Range. Where a new build is on the agenda, the construction loans page explains how progress payments work alongside the grant.
Questions answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the SA First Home Owner Grant worth?
The grant is a one-off payment of up to $15,000 for an eligible first home buyer purchasing or building a new home in South Australia, paid once per applicant pair rather than per person.
Can I get the grant on an established home?
No. Both the grant and the first home buyer stamp duty relief apply to new homes only. An established home that someone has lived in before attracts neither scheme in South Australia.
What is the property price cap for the grant?
There is no value cap. For contracts entered into on or after 6 June 2024, the former property value cap was removed, so a new home at any price can qualify if you meet the eligibility rules.
Do I have to live in the property to keep the grant?
Yes. The home must become your principal place of residence for the period RevenueSA requires. An investment property or holiday house does not satisfy the occupancy condition, and the grant can be clawed back.
Is the grant different from stamp duty relief?
Yes, they are two separate schemes run by RevenueSA. The grant is a $15,000 payment towards a new home. The relief removes stamp duty entirely for eligible first home buyers of new homes and vacant land.
How long does the grant take to arrive?
In most cases your lender lodges the application as an approved agent, and payment is made once the eligible transaction completes. RevenueSA does not publish a fixed processing timeframe, so ask your lender early.
Mortgage broker for Naracoorte and the suburbs around it
Get In Touch
If you are weighing up a house-and-land package or a new build and want the grant, the duty relief and your borrowing capacity mapped together, call (08) 8451 3906. Your Mortgage Broker Naracoorte operates under an Australian Credit Licence, discloses its fee and commission structure in writing, and can walk you through the whole sequence. The About page introduces the person behind the licence.