Help to Buy: the federal shared equity scheme and its Queensland caps

In this article

Written by

Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →

A Queensland first buyer with a modest income and a small deposit now has two governments offering to buy part of the home with them. The State runs Boost to Buy. The Commonwealth runs Help to Buy, which opened for applications on 5 December 2025 and is administered by Housing Australia. Both are shared equity schemes: the government pays a slice of the purchase price, the buyer borrows less, and the government's slice is repaid later at whatever the home is then worth.

The two schemes cannot be combined, and they are aimed at different buyers. This guide deals with the federal one. It uses the rules published on the Australian Government's First Home Buyers website and Housing Australia's own announcements, and covers how much the Commonwealth contributes, who can apply, the price caps that apply in Brisbane and the rest of Queensland, what the buyer has to keep doing, and how Help to Buy compares with the State's scheme.

First Home Buyers website, Australian Government Help to Buy Scheme and Help to Buy property price caps.

What the scheme is

Under Help to Buy the Australian Government contributes part of the purchase price of a home and takes an equity share in it. The First Home Buyers website puts the contribution at up to 30 per cent for an existing home and up to 40 per cent for a newly built home. The buyer needs a minimum deposit of 2 per cent of the purchase price and borrows the remainder from a participating lender.

Because the loan is so much smaller than the price, no lenders mortgage insurance is payable. The website presents this as one of the scheme's main savings, on top of the lower repayments that come with a smaller loan.

The Commonwealth's share is a proportion of the home, not a fixed sum. The website explains that when the buyer repays, the amount is based on the value of the property at the time of the payment. If the home has risen in value, the government's share is worth more in dollars than it paid; the share is a stake in the property, with the outcomes that go with one.

The scheme has a fixed number of places. The website states that 10,000 places are available each year.

How the scheme reached Queensland

Help to Buy depends on state law as well as federal law, which is why it arrived state by state. Housing Australia recorded in June 2025 that Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales had enacted the legislation needed for the scheme to operate, and that the program directions setting out how it would be run were registered on 13 June 2025. The Government had expanded eligibility in March 2025, raising both the income limits and the property price caps from the levels first proposed.

Housing Australia announced the launch on 28 November 2025 and opened applications on 5 December 2025. Western Australia joined on 22 December 2025. The Adviser reported on 12 February 2026 that the scheme was then available in every state and territory except Tasmania, which had not at that point passed its legislation.

Queensland buyers have therefore been able to apply since the first day.

How much the Commonwealth contributes

The two rates, 30 per cent and 40 per cent, are maximums. A buyer can ask for a smaller contribution, and a buyer with more than a 2 per cent deposit can use it to keep a larger share of the home.

The gap between the two rates is deliberate. A newly built home attracts ten percentage points more than an existing one, which on a $700,000 purchase is a further $70,000 of the price paid by the Commonwealth and $70,000 less to borrow.

On rates alone the federal scheme is the more generous of the two for either kind of home. The comparison changes once income limits are brought in, as a later section shows.

The Queensland price caps

Help to Buy sets a maximum purchase price that depends on where the home is. Each state has one cap for its capital city and regional centres and a lower one for the rest of the state.

For Queensland the Help to Buy price cap table on the First Home Buyers website gives $1,000,000 for the capital city and regional centres, and $700,000 for the rest of the state. The table names Queensland's regional centres as the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. A home in Brisbane, on the Gold Coast or on the Sunshine Coast can therefore cost up to $1,000,000. A home in Townsville, Cairns, Toowoomba, Mackay, Rockhampton, Bundaberg or anywhere else outside those three areas is subject to the $700,000 cap.

Applying the maximum contribution rates to the caps gives the largest sums the Commonwealth could put into a Queensland purchase.

Queensland's capital-city cap sits in the middle of the national range. The same table gives $1,300,000 for New South Wales, $950,000 for Victoria, $900,000 for South Australia, $850,000 for Western Australia and $700,000 for Tasmania. Outside the capitals and regional centres, Queensland's $700,000 is second only to the $800,000 that applies in regional New South Wales.

That last point is absolute. A buyer cannot make up the difference above the cap from their own pocket and still use the scheme. On the fringes of the three higher-cap areas, where one side of a boundary carries $1,000,000 and the other $700,000, the postcode decides which homes are in reach.

Who can apply

Help to Buy is income tested, and the limits are much lower than those of most other first-buyer schemes. The First Home Buyers website gives a maximum annual taxable income of $103,000 for an individual applicant and $165,000 for joint applicants and for single parents. Income is taken from the Australian Taxation Office notice of assessment for the previous financial year, and the website says the thresholds are indexed to wages each year. The current figures are those published for 2026-27; guides written before July 2026 show the earlier limits of $100,000 and $160,000.

The other conditions are:

• every applicant is at least 18 years old
• every applicant is an Australian citizen
• the buyer will live in the home as an owner-occupier
• no applicant owns property, in Australia or overseas, with limited exceptions for single parents
• the buyer is not receiving help from another scheme of the same kind.

The citizenship requirement is stricter than Queensland's own scheme, which accepts permanent residents. The ownership test is broader than many, because it reaches property held overseas.

The last condition is the one that forces a choice. The website says a Help to Buy participant cannot receive help from other schemes, including shared equity schemes, loans or guarantees provided by states or territories. A Queensland buyer cannot hold Boost to Buy and Help to Buy on the same home. The website adds that stamp duty concessions remain available, so Queensland's first home transfer duty concessions can still be claimed where the buyer meets the Queensland Revenue Office's separate conditions.

What can be bought

The scheme accepts a wide range of dwellings. The website lists a new or existing home, including a house, townhouse, apartment, unit or duplex. It also lists a vacant block of land for the construction of a new home.

That is a real difference from Boost to Buy, which excludes vacant land and off-the-plan purchases and requires a completed dwelling. A buyer who wants to buy a block in a new Queensland estate and build on it can look to the federal scheme, and a newly built home attracts the higher 40 per cent contribution.

The home must be at or under the price cap for its postcode, and it must be the buyer's own home. Help to Buy is not available for an investment property.

Two purchases worked through

The following examples use illustrative prices at the minimum 2 per cent deposit and the maximum contribution. They show how the three sources of money fit together, and how much smaller the loan is than the price.

In the first case the buyer borrows 68 per cent of the price; in the second, 58 per cent. For comparison, a buyer of the same $650,000 unit with a 5 per cent deposit and no shared equity would borrow $617,500, which is $175,500 more than the Help to Buy loan.

The deposit in each example is smaller than the one buyers have been bringing. Housing Australia reported that the median deposit among applicants in the scheme's first weeks was $29,000. The costs of buying sit outside these sums: legal and conveyancing fees, inspections and any transfer duty are the buyer's to pay.

Applying, and how many have

A buyer applies through a participating lender, not directly to Housing Australia. When Housing Australia reported on the scheme's first weeks on 10 February 2026, two lenders were offering Help to Buy loans: the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Bank Australia. It said further lenders would join through 2026 and that the current list would be kept on the First Home Buyers website. Teachers Mutual Bank became the third on 27 July 2026, The Adviser reported, with its Help to Buy loans due to open to mortgage brokers from 6 October 2026. A panel of three is short compared with the more than 30 lenders authorised for the 5% Deposit Scheme, so a buyer's usual bank may not be on it.

The first count Housing Australia published shows who the scheme reached first. As at 31 January 2026, Housing Australia counted 2,356 places conditionally or fully approved since the opening on 5 December. Of those, 278 households had bought a home and 2,078 were preparing to buy. Single applicants made up 64 per cent of applications and single parents 10 per cent.

Set against 10,000 places a year, 2,356 approvals in under two months is a brisk start, at close to a quarter of the annual allocation. Housing Australia's chief executive, Scott Langford, called it an "early success" for buyers who "face significant financial hurdles". Housing Australia has not, in the releases read for this guide, broken the figures down by state, so the number of Queensland participants is not known from these sources.

The high share of single applicants follows from the income limits. A single person on up to $103,000 is the buyer least able to service a full loan on a Queensland home, and the one for whom removing 30 or 40 per cent of the debt changes the answer.

Living with a government share

Participation continues after settlement. The website sets out ongoing obligations: the participant must keep the home insured, keep the property maintained, and take part in periodic reviews, at which they provide insurance certificates and updated income details.

The income review matters because the scheme is means tested throughout, not only at entry. The summary on the website does not set out what happens to a participant whose income later passes the threshold. The detail sits in the program directions and in the participation agreement, which a buyer should have explained before signing.

There are three ways out, according to the website. A participant can make incremental repayments from savings, increasing their own share over time. They can buy back the Government's equity when they have the financial capacity to do so. Or the share is repaid when the property is sold. In each case the amount is worked out on the property's value at that time, which means a valuation is part of every repayment.

No interest is described as payable on the Commonwealth's share. The cost of the arrangement is the portion of any growth in value that goes to the Government, and it is paid at the end instead of month by month.

Help to Buy or Boost to Buy

For a Queensland first buyer the two shared equity schemes overlap but are not interchangeable. The table sets the main terms side by side.

Three practical conclusions follow from the table.

A single buyer earning between $103,000 and $155,000, or a couple earning between $165,000 and $232,000, is above the federal limits and within the State's. For them the choice is made: only Boost to Buy is open.

A buyer under the federal limits can consider either. Help to Buy offers the larger contribution, five percentage points more on an existing home and ten more on a new one, and it accepts land-and-build purchases. Boost to Buy has a single $1,000,000 cap across the whole state, which matters in regional cities where the federal cap is $700,000 and some family homes are priced above it.

A permanent resident who is not yet a citizen is outside Help to Buy altogether.

What to weigh

Shared equity suits a buyer whose obstacle is the size of the loan. It lowers repayments from the first month and removes lenders mortgage insurance. It asks for something in return: a share of the home's future value, and a set of continuing obligations about insurance, upkeep, occupancy and income reporting.

It also narrows a buyer's options in ways that are easy to underrate. The lender must be on a short panel. The price is capped by postcode. Places are limited each year. And the choice of Help to Buy rules out the State's shared equity scheme and state guarantees on the same purchase.

For a buyer who qualifies for both a shared equity scheme and the 5% Deposit Scheme, the comparison is between owning all of a home with a large loan and owning most of one with a smaller loan. Neither is better in general. The answer depends on income, on how long the buyer expects to stay, and on how they would feel about sharing a gain they helped create. Housing Australia and the participating lenders assess eligibility; a broker, solicitor or licensed adviser can set the two paths against a buyer's own figures.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →