First Home Owner Grant NSW

The calculator above checks yours against those caps, and shows the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme duty saving beside the grant.

$10,000, and only for a new home

Revenue NSW calls it the First Home Owner (New Homes) Grant, and the name is the rule. It is $10,000, or the price if lower, on a house, townhouse, apartment or unit that is newly built, bought off the plan or substantially renovated. It is not paid on an established home.

The Act’s test is the home’s history, not its age. A new home is one that “has not been previously occupied or sold as a place of residence”, and the definition takes in a substantially renovated home and one built to replace a home that was demolished. So a two-year-old house that someone has already lived in is not new for the grant.

Two caps: $600,000 to buy, $750,000 to build

Buying a newly built or renovated home, the purchase price must not exceed $600,000. Buying land and signing with a builder, Revenue NSW adds the land, the building contract and any variations, and that total must not exceed $750,000; an owner-builder’s house and land face the same $750,000. “Must not exceed” means a price of exactly $600,000 qualifies.

The two are measured at different moments. A purchase is valued at the contract date, at the higher of the price and the market value. A build is valued at completion, so variations agreed along the way count, and a build that starts under $750,000 can finish over it.

Who is ruled out

You and your partner are out if either of you owned a home in Australia before 1 July 2000, or has since lived for six continuous months in an Australian home you owned. Owning without living there, or living there for less than six months, does not stop you, and property overseas is not counted.

An earlier first home owner grant rules you out. So does being a temporary resident: at least one buyer must be a citizen or permanent resident, and Revenue NSW will not backdate the grant to the day permanent residency comes through.

Twelve months in the home

For contracts from 1 July 2023 you must move in within 12 months of settlement or completion and live there for 12 continuous months; earlier contracts needed six. One buyer living there is enough. Members of the Australian Defence Force can be exempt from the residence requirement if every buyer is on the NSW electoral roll.

The grant and the duty scheme together

Revenue NSW says the grant may be paid in addition to other exemptions or concessions, and the one that matters is the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme: no transfer duty on a home to $800,000, new or existing, and a concession below $1,000,000. Vacant land is free to $350,000 with a concession below $450,000. Unlike the grant, it covers established homes too. The NSW stamp duty calculator runs the full schedule.

Worked through with the calculator’s opening figures: a $580,000 new home in Sydney or anywhere else in NSW, signed on 4 October 2026, gets the $10,000 grant, and a first home buyer pays $0 in duty instead of $20,287. That is $30,287 of help in all, and 67% of it comes from the duty side.

Applying

If you need the grant at settlement, or for a builder’s first progress payment, apply through the approved agent providing your finance, which is normally your lender. Otherwise apply through Revenue NSW’s FHOG portal within 12 months of settlement or of the home being finished; the Act leaves a later application to Revenue NSW’s discretion. One grant is paid per transaction, however many buyers there are.

Comparing states, or not sure this is the right one? The First Home Owner Grant in every state sets all eight side by side.