Grants and schemes
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First home buyer compliance

This program focuses on ensuring that first home buyers benefiting from any first home buyer duty concession or exemptions, such as the First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme or the First Home Owner Grant (FHOG), satisfy the eligibility and residence criteria.

All first home buyers who receive benefits under the schemes are matched against information held by third parties to determine that they have met these requirements. Applicants who are found to be ineligible for the schemes are required to repay the benefits, which may include penalties and interest.

Initiatives include:

  • identifying and investigating applicants who fail to meet the residence requirements
  • identifying transactions that may not meet the eligibility and residency criteria through a range of data-matching initiatives, using internal and third-party sources, such as utility companies, financial institutions and government agencies
  • verifying information provided by customers against third-party data, to identify undeclared spouses, prior ownership, understated duty amounts, and inconsistencies between property transfers and FHOG applications
  • auditing approved financial institutions, which process First Home Owner Grant applications on our behalf, to ensure that appropriate systems, record keeping and processing controls are in place
  • investigating anonymous disclosures reported through the compliance hotline.

Common errors for first home benefits (FHB) include recipients:

  • not understanding the definition of de facto relationships
  • not understanding that leasing the property for 12 months under a residential tenancy agreement grants a right of exclusive occupation to the tenant – the landlord does not have permission to occupy it as their principal place of residence, and hence will not be able to satisfy the residence requirement
  • not having a clear understanding of what constitutes occupying a property as their principal place of residence – ‘living in a property’ in a ‘temporary or transient’ nature generally will not satisfy the residence requirement.

Case study: principal place of residence

A property owner received the a first home owner grant on a property they owned but rarely stayed in. Their bed and belongings were at their parent's place.

The owner signed a statutory declaration claiming they resided at the property and supported this with energy and water bills, and bank statements, addressed to the property. However, the bank statements showed regular withdrawals from various sources near the parent’s house, and the water bills confirmed low water consumption.

It transpired that the owner was only visiting the property to take out the bins and collect the mail.

We were not satisfied that the owner met the residence requirement as they did not treat the property as his principal place of residence.

They had to repay the $10,000 grant, as well as an additional penalty. They also had to repay the stamp duty, with interest and a penalty.