First Home Buyers Geelong

Buying your first home in Geelong comes with real help from the government, if you know what to claim. First home buyers in Victoria can get a $10,000 First Home Owner Grant on a new home, plus a stamp duty exemption that saves thousands more. Talk to one of our licensed local brokers, who sorts out your grant, your stamp duty saving and your deposit, and finds a loan built for first-timers. Free to you, no obligation.

Talk to one of our brokers

The two savings worth knowing about

Most first home buyers in Geelong qualify for one or both of these. Getting them right is worth a lot of money.

First Home Owner Grant. A $10,000 payment towards a new or never-occupied home valued up to $750,000. You have to move in and live there. Established homes don’t get the grant.

Stamp duty saving. First home buyers pay no stamp duty on a home up to $600,000. Between $600,001 and $750,000 you get a sliding discount. This one covers new and established homes, provided you live in it as your main home. On a $600,000 home that wipes out the duty in full, which can come to tens of thousands of dollars.

There are eligibility rules on both: you generally need to be over 18, an Australian citizen or permanent resident, buying to live in rather than invest, and you can’t have owned a home in Australia before or claimed the grant already. A broker checks whether you tick the boxes before you commit to anything.

Where a broker actually helps

The grant and the duty saving are the headline. The harder part is the loan itself, and that’s where a good broker pays off.

A first home buyer’s biggest hurdle is usually the deposit. A broker tells you which lenders accept a smaller deposit, whether lenders mortgage insurance is worth paying to get in sooner, and whether any low-deposit schemes fit your situation. They work out your genuine borrowing power across several lenders, since the banks all read your income differently. Then they get you pre-approved so you can bid at auction or make an offer without guessing.

None of that costs you. The lender pays the broker when the loan settles. If a fee ever applied, you’d be told in writing first.

The Geelong angle

Geelong still has genuine entry points for first home buyers. The northern suburbs like Corio and Norlane sit at the affordable end. The growth estates at Armstrong Creek, Lara and Leopold are full of new house-and-land packages, which is exactly where the $10,000 grant applies. A broker who knows these areas can line up finance that matches the estate’s build timeline.

Read the full process

Want the whole thing start to finish, from saving a deposit to settlement day? Our guide to buying your first home in Geelong walks through every step. If you’re building rather than buying existing, look at construction loans too.

Get started

Tell us where you’re at and one of our brokers who handles first home buyers every week picks it up.

Start your enquiry