SA first home buyers
SA First Home Owner Grant
The SA First Home Owner Grant is a one-off payment of up to $15,000 from the South Australian government, paid to eligible first home buyers who buy or build a brand new home in this state and live in it as their principal place of residence.
Your Mortgage Broker Aldinga Beach(https://g.page/r/placeholder) serves Aldinga Beach and the surrounding Onkaparinga coast, and this page covers what the grant is worth, who qualifies, which properties it covers, how it stacks with stamp duty relief, and how the application actually gets lodged. For the lending side of a first purchase, see our first home buyer loans page.
What It Is Worth Right Now
The grant pays up to $15,000 to each eligible applicant, once, on a new home, and here is the part most buyers miss: for contracts entered into on or after 6 June 2024, RevenueSA removed the property value cap entirely. Older articles still quote a cap and banded duty thresholds; those rules no longer apply to new contracts, so a new home at any price can qualify if you meet the eligibility rules. That combination, a fixed payment plus no ceiling on value, changes what a first home buyer can realistically shop for, and it makes the pages that still quote last decade's caps actively misleading.
Who Qualifies
Eligibility sits with RevenueSA, and the detail lives on their First Home Owner Grant page. The broad shape is:
New homes only
First ownership
Age and residency
Your home, genuinely
A qualifying contract
Owner-builders included
Which Properties It Covers
The property type decides everything, so check the shape of your purchase against this table before you fall in love with a listing:
| Property type | Grant | Stamp duty relief |
|---|---|---|
| New house, unit, townhouse or apartment, never lived in | Eligible | Eligible |
| Off-the-plan purchase of a new home | Eligible | Eligible |
| House-and-land package | Eligible | Eligible |
| Vacant land to build a new home | Via a comprehensive contract or owner-builder conditions | Eligible |
| Established home, any age | Not eligible | Not eligible |
The last row is the trap. Buyers raised on interstate schemes, where established homes sometimes qualify, assume the same applies here. In South Australia it does not.
Why The Rule Bites Here
New stock is where the coastline is growing
Aldinga Beach recorded 571 dwelling approvals across the last five years, placing the suburb in the 89th percentile for building activity statewide, so the new housing the grant requires genuinely exists here, in estates along the Aldinga and Sellicks Beach growth corridor rather than as a theoretical category.
The existing stock mostly misses
About 90.9 per cent of local dwellings are separate houses and only 0.4 per cent are flats or apartments, which means the overwhelming majority of Aldinga Beach listings are established homes. The grant buys you nothing on most of the second-hand market, and buyers need to know that before inspecting.
Eligible and desirable are not the same thing
A new townhouse in a releasing estate and a renovated brick home near the esplanade sit streets apart and worlds apart financially. The new build carries the grant and pays no stamp duty on eligible contracts; the established home carries neither, which narrows the choice for a tight deposit.
What this means for your search
Point your search at the new estates first if the grant is central to your budget, and compare the true cost of each path: a dearer established home without concessions versus a new build with the payment and duty relief behind it. Our construction loans page covers how the build funding runs alongside the grant.
How It Stacks With Duty Relief
The grant is not the only money on the table, and the second scheme is arguably bigger:
Separate scheme, same office
No duty at any value
Both at once
Vacant land counts
Established homes still miss out
How it works
How To Apply And When Money Arrives
- 1
Let the lender lodge it
In most cases the bank or lender providing your finance lodges the grant application as an approved agent, which folds the paperwork into the loan process rather than running it as a separate project, and it is the route RevenueSA expects most applicants to take.
- 2
Confirm it actually happens
Relying on the lender and never checking is a documented failure mode. Ask at application time whether the grant claim is included, get the answer in writing, and confirm again before settlement, because an unclaimed grant discovered afterwards is a much slower recovery.
- 3
Direct lodgement when needed
If your lender does not lodge as an approved agent, or you are buying without a conventional loan, you apply directly to RevenueSA within the period it allows after completion, using the forms and evidence checklist published on its grant page.
- 4
When the money lands
RevenueSA does not publish fixed payment dates by purchase type, so treat any date a marketing page promises with suspicion. The payment follows once the eligible transaction completes, which for a construction contract means the sequence runs differently to an off-the-plan settlement.
Worth knowing early
What Gets An Application Knocked Back
These are the documented failure modes, and every one of them is avoidable with an hour of reading:
- Buying established The most common knock-back: a buyer purchases an established home expecting the grant or the duty relief, and neither applies in South Australia.
- Trusting stale caps Assuming the old value caps still apply, in either direction, wastes eligible purchases and misprices ineligible ones; the June 2024 changes rewrote the rules.
- Investment intent Not genuinely intending to live in the home as your principal place of residence puts the payment at risk, and RevenueSA can recover grants paid on false intentions.
- The unlodged claim Assuming the lender handled the application and later discovering it never went in, which is why the confirmation step above exists.
- Eligibility assumptions Meeting the property test but not the applicant test, on prior ownership, age or residency, and finding out late; the RevenueSA page settles it in minutes.
Where we work
Areas We Service
Your Mortgage Broker Aldinga Beach works with first home buyers across the southern Onkaparinga coast, from Aldinga Beach through Port Willunga, Aldinga, Sellicks Hill and Sellicks Beach, and each suburb page carries its own local lending picture alongside the grant rules set out here.
Questions answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the SA First Home Owner Grant worth?
Up to $15,000, paid once per eligible applicant. It applies to a new home never lived in before, and for contracts entered into on or after 6 June 2024 there is no property value cap attached to it.
Can I get the grant on an established home?
No. South Australia pays the grant on new homes only. An established home attracts neither the grant nor the first home buyer stamp duty relief, which is the single most common misconception among buyers.
What is the property price cap for the grant?
There is none. For contracts entered into on or after 6 June 2024 the former value cap was removed, so a new home at any price can qualify, provided the buyer meets the eligibility rules.
Do I have to live in the property to keep the grant?
Yes. The home must become your principal place of residence for the period RevenueSA requires. Treating it as an investment from day one puts the grant at risk of being clawed back.
Is the grant different from stamp duty relief?
Yes, they are separate schemes run by RevenueSA. The grant is a $15,000 payment, while the duty relief removes stamp duty on eligible new homes and vacant land with no value threshold since June 2024.
How long does the grant take to arrive?
RevenueSA does not publish a fixed timeframe. Where your lender lodges as an approved agent the claim usually runs alongside settlement, and payment follows once the eligible transaction completes.
Mortgage broker for Aldinga Beach and the suburbs around it
Get In Touch
Questions about how the grant fits your deposit, your loan structure or a house-and-land contract are exactly what a first conversation is for. Call (08) 8451 3906 to talk it through with a broker operating under an Australian Credit Licence, with our fee and commission structure published and our process documented. No cost, no obligation, and no rate guessing.