100,000 Australians Helped into Homes by the Federal Government’s Home Guarantee Scheme (HGS)

The HGS is an Australian Government initiative to support eligible home buyers, including first home buyers, single parents and regional Australians, purchase their home sooner. It comprises the First Home Guarantee (FHBG), the Family Home Guarantee (FHG) and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee (RFHBG). The Scheme is currently available to eligible home buyers through 32 Participating Lenders.

Since inception there has been strong demand for the Scheme across the country, particularly in regional areas where 34,000 regional Australians have been supported across the guarantees. One in five of the 100,000 Australians supported were key workers. This includes over 6,700 teachers, 5,000 nurses and almost 3,500 social workers.

NHFIC CEO Nathan Dal Bon said, “This is a wonderful milestone in the delivery of the Home Guarantee Scheme. We are pleased to have supported 100,000 Australians into housing. As a Government organisation, we support Australians across the housing spectrum from those renting in community housing, through to Australians with the goal of homeownership. We look forward to helping more Australians over the coming years into homes sooner under the Scheme.”   

NHFIC Chief Program Officer HGS Jennifer Chew said, “Thanks to the ongoing support of our Participating Lenders, we are proud to have helped 100,000 Australians into homes. NFHIC has an authorised panel of 32 Participating Lenders that offer the Home Guarantee Scheme to home buyers. We look forward to continuing to work with our lenders and their broker networks to help more Australians into homes.”

Note: The Australian Government recently announced its intention to expand the eligibility criteria of the Home Guarantee Scheme, effective 1 July 2023. The changes are not yet effective and will require amendment to the NHFIC Act and NHFIC’s Investment Mandate.

The changes announced by the Government are as follows:

All three Guarantees:

• Will become available to eligible borrowers who are Australian Permanent Residents, in addition to Australian citizens.  

First Home Guarantee and Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee:

• Friends, siblings, and other family members will be eligible for joint applications. These guarantees had previously been restricted to people that were married or in a de-facto relationship, in addition to single applicants.
• The guarantees will also be expanded to non-first home buyers who haven’t owned a property in Australia in the last ten years.

Family Home Guarantee:

• Expanding from single natural or adoptive parents with dependents to eligible borrowers who are single legal guardians of children such as aunts, uncles and grandparents.  

For more information on the Scheme, contact a Participating Lender or visit the NHFIC website.

About NHFIC - NHFIC’s mission is to improve housing outcomes for Australians. Established in 2018, NHFIC is a corporate Commonwealth entity that provides long-term and low-cost finance and capability building assistance to registered community housing providers (CHPs) to support the provision of more social and affordable housing. NHFIC lends, invests and provides grants to help finance the critical infrastructure needed to unlock and accelerate new housing supply. NHFIC supports home buyers by administering Government schemes that help them purchase their home sooner, and undertakes independent research into housing supply, demand and affordability in Australia. For more information and the latest data on our achievements, visit nhfic.gov.au  

Housing Legislative Package - the Federal Government has introduced legislation to transition NHFIC into Housing Australia, with expanded responsibilities to support delivery of their Housing Policy agenda. The legislation includes renaming NHFIC as Housing Australia with primary responsibility for delivering 40,000 new social and affordable homes over 5 years from 2024. This comprises 30,000 homes to be delivered with funding contributions from the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) (20,000 social, 10,000 affordable) and 10,000 affordable homes under the National Housing Accord. These additional responsibilities are subject to the passage of the legislation. NHFIC will continue to deliver the Home Guarantee Scheme (HGS), the Affordable Housing Bond Aggregator (AHBA) and the National Housing Infrastructure Facility (NHIF, which was recently expanded as part of the Federal Government’s 2022 housing election commitments).