Canberra’s first-home buyers and single parents struggling to get access to home ownership will have more options as the Commonwealth lifts price caps on a scheme to get them loans with a smaller deposit.
From July 1, the Commonwealth’s home guarantee scheme price caps will increase, the Prime Minister will reveal on Monday.
The ACT will see the country’s largest increase in the scheme’s price cap from $500,000 to $750,000.
The Canberra Times revealed in February the housing price boom had made the scheme’s caps “unrealistic” for single-income families.
The new price cap means most unit dwellings in the ACT will now be eligible for the scheme. Based on CoreLogic figures, the average unit price in Canberra is $594,992 while the median house price is $1.03 million.
ACT senator Zed Seselja said housing affordability was the top issue of concern he was hearing from Canberrans and had been lobbying Housing Minister Michael Sukkar to raise the price caps.
Senator Seselja said deliberate policy decisions from the ACT government to strangle available land supply for housing has seen prices skyrocket in recent years.
