Labor has reactivated its Help to Buy scheme, which means you can move into a "home" with just a 2 per cent deposit.

Labor has reactivated its Help to Buy scheme, which means you can move into a “home” with just a 2 per cent deposit.

It is what’s known as a “shared equity scheme” and was part of the 2022 federal government election commitment.

It means you can co-buy a home, with the government offering a helping hand.

The scheme will give people an “equity contribution” of up to 40 per cent of the cost of a new home, or 30 per cent for existing homes.

It can be a house, unit or townhouse.

The buyer won’t need to pay rent on the stake owned by the government.

But you will have to pay a component of any capital gain back to the government.

The capital gains will be calculated in reference to the size of the government’s equity share in the property.

For example, if the government holds a 30 per cent share in the property, then it would be entitled to 30 per cent of the proceeds of sale, which includes 30 per cent of any capital gains earned.

Seems like an interesting idea, though I get the feeling this is just going to keep inflating property prices right? It’s not doing anything to address the increased cost of housing, just helping more people enter the overpriced market.

  • LineNoise
    28•11 months ago

    The housing policy we’ve seen from Labor has been disastrously bad.

    • A refusal to invest in public housing, instead intending to repeat the “social and affordable” model that has already been a dismal failure in Victoria. …well, unless you’re a housing developer.

    • Housing targets that focus on commercial builds while we’ve 40+ years of public housing deficit in every state and territory.

    • And now this which sees people entering into loans they’d otherwise be told they can’t afford and literally sees the government invested in continuing capital growth of real estate prices for decades to come when the policies we need, properly implemented, would diminish or even end that growth.