
On Sunday 5th March the Victorian Government announced that first home buyers would be exempted from stamp duty for purchases of homes up to a price value of $600,000, with further discounts applying to $750,000. In addition to doubling current ‘grants’ to $20,000 in total for first home buyers buying in regional Victoria.
Relevant associated industry bodies like (H.I.A.) Housing Industry Australia are already placing pressure to see these measures flow on to NSW.
Now one of the big issues in Australia in recent times has been ‘housing affordability’ in context of Australia having experienced such rapid growth in home prices over the last few years to being now one of the top three most expensive in OECD countries, for home values. So the question is then, will this move by the Victorian Gov’t make housing more affordable? The answer is that it may not, if the effect of these exemptions is to simply stimulate demand in what has been a heated market in recent times. However, what this action does do is at least address the issue of first home owners not having all their hard earned savings soaked up or allocated to stamp duty (Gov’t) costs , but rather the savings can be applied directly as their deposit contribution to the home purchase. That effectively means lower borrowing & more equity that the borrower’s will initially hold, & that’s a positive.
In terms of additional solutions to home affordability we will ‘’watch this space’’ for further information coming out from Federal & NSW state government levels.