Grants and schemes
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Regional relocation grant

The Regional Relocation Grants offered assistance to people moving from metropolitan NSW to take up or look for employment in regional NSW.

Applications are now closed and cannot be accepted.

GrantEnd dateApplications closing date
Regional Relocation Home Buyers Grant30 September 201431 March 2015
Skilled Regional Relocation Incentive31 March 201530 September 2015

A person or household could only apply for one grant.

Regional Relocation Home Buyers Grant

The Regional Relocation Home Buyers Grant provided a $7,000 grant to people who moved to regional NSW and bought a new home.To qualify, you had to

  • be an individual, not a trustee
  • be an Australian citizen or permanent resident on the date your employment in regional NSW commenced
  • live in your new home within 12 months after the purchase date or, if you bought vacant land, commence construction within 12 months.

Your new home had to be

  • purchased between 1 July 2011 and 30 September 2014
  • where you lived as your principal place of residence
  • valued under $600,000, or under $450,000 for vacant land.

You could also apply if

  • you acquired a long-term lease (five years or more)
  • the lease value was not more than $600,000 and
  • you moved in within 12 months after signing the lease.

You also needed to have lived in a NSW metropolitan area for

  • at least 12 months before moving to regional NSW if you owned your home or
  • two years if you were renting.

When the grant started, each of your metropolitan homes during this period needed to have been more than 100km from your new regional workplace or home. From 12 May 2014, this distance was reduced to 50 km, as long as the local government area you moved to was not adjacent to any of the metropolitan local government areas you previously lived in.

Skilled Regional Relocation Incentive

The Skilled Regional Relocation Incentive offered a $10,000 grant if you started a new job or moved your small business to a regional area. It was paid in two $5,000 instalments, with at least 12 months between payments.

To qualify, you had to

  • start working in a regional area between 1 January 2014 and 31 March 2015
  • be an individual, not a trustee
  • be an Australian citizen or permanent resident on the date your employment commenced
  • be employed full-time in one or more regional jobs for at least 24 months over a three-year period, or self-employed for at least two years.

In addition you had to

  • live in a NSW metropolitan area for at least two years before moving to regional NSW and
  • each metropolitan home being more than 100km from your new regional workplace and home. From 12 May 2014, this distance was reduced to 50 km, as long as the regional local government area was not adjacent to any of the metropolitan local government areas.

Meeting the eligibility requirements

Sometimes we could pay the grant before you met all eligibility requirements, so long as you could meet the requirements within a specified timeframe. If you couldn’t, you were usually obliged to repay the grant, although we had some discretion over this.

What counted as regional NSW?

An area in NSW was considered regional if was outside the following areas.

  • the Sydney metropolitan area including Ashfield, Auburn, Bankstown, Blacktown, Blue Mountains, Botany Bay, Burwood, Camden, Campbelltown, Canada Bay, Canterbury, Fairfield, Gosford, Hawkesbury, Holroyd, Hornsby, Hunters Hill, Hurstville, Kogarah, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove, Leichhardt, Liverpool, Manly, Marrickville, Mosman, North Sydney, Parramatta, Penrith, Pittwater, Randwick, Rockdale, Ryde, Strathfield, Sutherland Shire, Sydney, The Hills Shire, Warringah, Waverley, Willoughby, Wollondilly, Woollahra and Wyong
  • the Newcastle local government area
  • the Wollongong local government area.

After 16 March 2012, relocations to the Byron local government area weren’t considered regional.

Similarly, we wouldn’t consider any application for the Skilled Regional Relocation Incentive based on employment or self-employment in the Byron area for work starting after 16 March 2012.