Queensland Budget keeps the $30,000 first home grant for four more years

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Kooky

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Queensland's $30,000 First Home Owner Grant will not end on 30 June after all. The 2026-27 State Budget, handed down on Tuesday 23 June, sets aside $72 million to keep the grant at $30,000 for four years, according to the Budget Overview and a statement issued the same afternoon by Treasurer and Minister for Home Ownership David Janetzki.

The Queensland Revenue Office confirmed the practical detail in a notice published on Budget day: the $30,000 grant continues for eligible contracts signed from 1 July 2026, on the eligibility criteria that already apply. The same notice carries one change that tightens rather than widens the rules. From 1 August, the transfer duty concessions for homes, including the first home concessions, will be open only to Australian citizens, permanent residents and a group the office calls specified foreign retirees.

Queensland Budget Overview 2026-27, Queensland Revenue Office notice and Treasurer's statement, all dated 23 June 2026.

A grant that was a week from expiring

The grant has been worth $30,000 since 20 November 2023, when it was doubled from $15,000. The Queensland Revenue Office still lists both amounts: $30,000 for contracts signed on or after that date, and $15,000 for contracts signed before it. For owner builders, the date that counts is the day the foundations are laid.

The higher amount was always temporary. It had been extended once already, and the extension ran to 30 June 2026. Mortgage broker Aussie published a piece on 29 April describing first buyers racing that deadline, with fewer than ten weeks left to sign a contract. One of its brokers, Vicki Fraser, summed up the advice she was giving clients in the article: "We can't say what is going to come next."

The Budget answers that question for anyone who had not signed in time. A buyer whose contract is dated 1 July 2026 or later is treated the same way as one who signed in June. The Revenue Office's wording is that the grant will "continue", and that further detail will follow once the legislation behind the Budget measures has passed and received Royal Assent.

The $72 million is a four-year figure. At $30,000 a grant, simple division gives 2,400 grants over the four years, or 600 a year. That is arithmetic on the published total, not a Government forecast of how many buyers will apply, and the Budget papers summarised by the Treasurer do not give one.

Who the grant reaches, and who it misses

Nothing in the Budget changes who can claim. The Revenue Office's eligibility page sets out the same tests as before. The home must be new: a dwelling never lived in or sold as a place of residence, an off-the-plan purchase, a home built under a contract or by an owner builder, or a substantially renovated home. Its value, land and contract variations included, must be less than $750,000. Applicants must be at least 18, and Australian citizens or permanent residents. They must move in within one year of the home being completed and live there continuously for six months.

The grant does not apply to established homes at any price. That is the limit first buyers in Brisbane run into most often. Aussie's April article quoted Cotality's home value index, which put the median Brisbane dwelling at $1,101,151, well above the $750,000 ceiling. Peter Corta, another broker quoted in the piece, said buyers chasing an eligible new home "have to go further out of town, often more than an hour from Brisbane".

So the grant, in practice, is a payment toward a new house or unit in the outer growth corridors and in regional cities, where a house and land package or a new townhouse can still be found under the cap. PRD Research, in a Budget summary published on 23 June, described it the same way: a one-off $30,000 to buy or build a new home valued under $750,000.

Duty on a new home stays at zero

The second first-buyer measure in the Budget is not new money but a confirmation. Since 1 May 2025, a first buyer who purchases a new home in Queensland has paid no transfer duty on it, whatever the price. The Treasurer's statement describes that relief as "now locked-in law" and puts its value at more than $60 million a year.

The statement also gives the first take-up figures since the exemption began. More than 3,500 Queenslanders have used it since May 2025, saving more than $66 million between them. Dividing one by the other gives an average of roughly $19,000 in duty not paid per purchase.

Established homes are treated differently, and the Budget leaves that untouched. Under the first home concession, the Revenue Office charges no duty on an existing home bought for up to $700,000, then reduces the concession in steps until it disappears at $800,000. The office's own examples show the pattern.

The gap between the first and last rows is the policy in one line. A first buyer can spend well over $1 million on a new home and pay nothing, while one who buys an older house for $850,000 pays more than $24,000. The design is deliberate: the State wants first-buyer demand to pull new homes out of the ground.

Boost to Buy: 100 households in, 2,000 places promised

The third measure is Boost to Buy, the State's shared equity scheme. Under it, the Government takes a stake in the home alongside the buyer: up to 30 per cent of the price for a new home and up to 25 per cent for an existing one. The buyer needs a deposit of at least 2 per cent, and the home can cost up to $1 million. Queensland Treasury lists the income limits as $150,000 for a single buyer and $225,000 for two adults or a single parent.

The Budget Overview describes Boost to Buy as a $330 million program. That total is not new: Treasury announced in December 2025 that funding had been doubled to $330 million, enough for up to 2,000 places, with half of them reserved for homes outside south-east Queensland. What the Budget adds, according to Budget Paper 4, is $2 million to improve how the scheme is delivered.

The Treasurer's statement gives the scheme's progress: more than 100 Queenslanders have moved into their first home through Boost to Buy. Trade publication The Adviser reported on 10 April that a second round of 500 places had opened, taking the places released to 1,000, and that about 150 first buyers had used the scheme since its launch. Applications go through one approved lender, Unity Bank.

A citizenship test for duty concessions

The one tightening sits in the Revenue Office's Budget notice. For transactions entered into from 1 August 2026, a buyer must be an Australian citizen, a permanent resident or a specified foreign retiree to claim a home concession on transfer duty. The office names three kinds of purchase the rule covers: a home, a first home, and vacant land on which a first home will be built.

For most first buyers nothing changes, because the First Home Owner Grant already required citizenship or permanent residency. The buyers affected are those who are neither citizens nor permanent residents and who could, until now, claim a duty concession on a home they intended to live in. The notice does not define a specified foreign retiree, and that definition will matter to a small number of households.

The industry's response: steady, with one gap

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland welcomed the Budget on the day. Its statement counted $12.3 billion across housing initiatives, including the $72 million for the grant and the $330 million for Boost to Buy, and no new property taxes. Chief executive Antonia Mercorella said the institute was relieved "to see a steady hand on the tiller in Queensland", after a Federal Budget in May that changed the tax treatment of property investment.

The REIQ also named what it did not find. Ms Mercorella said stamp duty "continues to act as a barrier to mobility and home ownership", and pointed to the Australian Capital Territory. Australian Broker reported on 24 June that the ACT had announced, two days before Queensland's Budget, that no first home buyer there would pay stamp duty from 1 July, whatever the price of the home. Queensland's exemption stops at new homes.

The same report set out why the institute keeps pressing the point. It cited figures showing mortgage repayments took 53.2 per cent of median family income in Queensland in the first quarter of 2026, the second highest share in the country, and that saving a 20 per cent deposit in Brisbane takes about 12 years. Those figures are the report's; the Budget papers do not use them.

What first buyers should watch for next

Two dates follow from the Budget. From 1 July, new contracts fall under the continued grant rather than the old extension, with no break between the two. From 1 August, the citizenship test applies to duty concessions.

Both depend on legislation. The Revenue Office says it will publish the detail after Royal Assent, and until then its Budget notice is the reference. Buyers who are part-way through a purchase are the ones most exposed to the dates: the grant looks at the day the contract is signed, or the day foundations are laid for an owner builder, while the duty rule looks at the day the transaction is entered into.

The Treasurer's statement frames all three measures as steps toward a longer goal, lifting Queensland from what he called the bottom of the home ownership ladder to the top within a decade. The Budget does not say how that will be measured from year to year. What it does give first buyers is certainty on the amounts: $30,000 toward a new home under $750,000, no duty on a new home at any price, and a shared equity scheme with places still to be released.

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.

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