SA first home buyers
SA First Home Owner Grant
The South Australian First Home Owner Grant is a one-off state government payment of up to $15,000 available to eligible first home buyers who buy or build a new home in South Australia and live in it as their principal place of residence.
Your Mortgage Broker Craigburn Farm(/about/) is a mortgage broking business serving Craigburn Farm and the City of Mitcham, and this page sets out 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.
What It Is Worth Right Now
The First Home Owner Grant in South Australia is worth up to $15,000, paid once per eligible applicant, and that number has quietly become more powerful than it looks on paper. The reason is a rule change that older articles still miss: for contracts entered into on or after 6 June 2024, RevenueSA removed the property value cap entirely, so an eligible new home at any price can qualify. Pair that with the separate first home buyer stamp duty relief, also uncapped for new homes and vacant land on contracts from the same date, and a first home buyer in South Australia can receive the payment and pay no duty at all on the same transaction. Very few buyers we speak to realise both changes landed together, because the internet is still full of pre-2024 pages quoting caps and banded thresholds that no longer apply.
Who Qualifies
Eligibility is set by RevenueSA, and the detail lives on its grant page rather than anywhere else, so treat the bullets below as the shape of the test and the RevenueSA page as the authority. The core requirements, in plain terms, run like this:
A first home, not a first purchase attempt
Age and residency requirements apply
A new home, never lived in
Your principal place of residence
An eligible transaction date
One grant per applicant
Which Properties It Covers
The property type rules are where most of the confusion sits, so here is the eligibility breakdown in one table:
| Property type | Grant eligible? | Duty relief eligible? |
|---|---|---|
| Brand new house, unit, townhouse or apartment, never lived in | Yes | Yes |
| Off-the-plan purchase of a new home | Yes | Yes |
| House-and-land package | Yes | Yes |
| New home under a comprehensive building contract | Yes | Yes |
| Vacant land to build a new home | Partially, under the build rules | Yes |
| Owner-built home | Yes, under owner-builder rules | No |
| Established, previously lived-in home | No | No |
The owner-builder row deserves a note: it is treated differently from a commercial builder under a comprehensive contract, and the conditions are stricter, so read the RevenueSA page before committing to an owner-build path.
Why The Rule Bites Here
The stock is almost entirely established
Nearly every dwelling in Craigburn Farm is a separate house, and the census records effectively no flats or apartments here at all. That means the overwhelming majority of local property is established housing, which attracts neither the grant nor the duty relief, however eligible the buyer happens to be.
New supply exists, but it is small and specific
Around 323 dwelling approvals went through in Craigburn Farm over the last five years, with 57 of those in 2021-22. Some of that supply is knockdown-rebuild and house-and-land work, which is exactly the transaction type the grant rewards, but the volume is modest compared with greenfield corridors further out.
The gap between eligible and desirable
The eligible new stock around the foothills tends to sit in newer release pockets and infill sites, not on the leafy established streets most buyers picture when they start searching here. Buyers often spend months looking at established homes that will never qualify, then run out of patience.
What that means for your search
Decide early whether the grant matters to your budget or not. If it does, filter for new builds, off-the-plan and house-and-land within reach of Craigburn Farm, and check our first home buyer loans page for how the deposit side works. If it does not, an established purchase in this suburb may simply be the right trade-off, and the grant becomes irrelevant rather than a loss.
How It Stacks With Duty Relief
The interaction between the two schemes is where the real money sits for a South Australian first home buyer, and the position is unusually clean since June 2024:
The grant and the relief are separate schemes
New homes pay no stamp duty at any value
A new home at any price can get both
Established homes get neither
Older threshold tables are obsolete
How it works
How To Apply And When Money Arrives
- 1
Your lender usually lodges it
In most cases the bank or lender providing your finance lodges the grant application as an approved agent, which is the smoothest path because it rides along with the loan process. Ask at application stage to confirm it is being handled.
- 2
Direct lodgement is the fallback
If your lender does not act as an approved agent, or declines to lodge on your behalf, you apply directly to RevenueSA yourself. The forms and evidence requirements are published on the RevenueSA site, and the paperwork burden is yours to manage.
- 3
Payment lands after completion
The government pages do not promise fixed dates, and we will not invent one. Broadly, the grant is paid once the eligible transaction completes, so for a house-and-land build that means after the build reaches the point the contract treats as completion, not when you sign.
- 4
The deadline still applies
You must lodge within the period RevenueSA allows after completion, and the accessible pages do not state the window in days. Treat the deadline as real, diary it at settlement, and confirm the current requirement directly rather than relying on hearsay.
Worth knowing early
What Gets An Application Knocked Back
Most declined applications in South Australia fail on one of a handful of foreseeable errors, all of them avoidable with a little care:
- Buying established and expecting the money The most common mistake in the state, particularly in established suburbs like Craigburn Farm, where nearly all stock is previously lived-in and therefore ineligible for both schemes.
- Assuming old caps still apply Buyers talk themselves out of high-value new homes because an older article quoted a cap. For contracts from 6 June 2024 there is no value cap, so do not self-reject on outdated information.
- No genuine intention to live there The property must become your principal place of residence for the required period. An application made while secretly planning to rent the home out is a claim that can be reversed, with penalties.
- Assuming the lender lodged, and it did not Relying on the lender to lodge the application and later discovering it never happened is a known failure mode, and the deadline keeps running regardless. Confirm lodgement in writing.
- Contract structure problems Owner-build arrangements, off-the-plan contracts and construction contracts each carry specific conditions, and a contract that does not match the scheme's definitions can fail on technical grounds after you have committed.
Where we work
Areas We Service
Alongside Craigburn Farm, Your Mortgage Broker Craigburn Farm serves the Mitcham foothills, including Blackwood, Hawthorndene, Coromandel Valley, Flagstaff Hill, Bellevue Heights and Eden Hills, and we work with first home buyers across all of them on grant eligibility, deposit strategy and lender selection.
Questions answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the SA First Home Owner Grant worth?
It is a one-off payment of up to $15,000 for an eligible first home that has never been lived in. RevenueSA administers the scheme and publishes the current terms.
Can I get the grant on an established home?
No. The grant covers new homes only, including off-the-plan purchases and house-and-land contracts. An established home attracts neither the grant nor the first home buyer duty relief.
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 an eligible new home at any price can qualify.
Do I have to live in the property to keep the grant?
Yes. It must become your principal place of residence for the period RevenueSA requires. If you never move in, or move out too early, the grant can be clawed back.
Is the grant different from stamp duty relief?
Yes, they are separate schemes with separate eligibility tests. The grant is a $15,000 payment, while the relief removes stamp duty on eligible new homes and vacant land at any value.
How long does the grant take to arrive?
The pages do not publish fixed timeframes. In most cases your lender lodges the application as an approved agent, and payment is made once the eligible transaction completes.
Mortgage broker for Craigburn Farm and the suburbs around it
Get In Touch
If you are weighing a house-and-land contract against an established purchase and want the grant and duty implications mapped properly, call (08) 8451 3906. You will deal with a named broker, under a published fee structure, working across a panel of lenders, and the first conversation costs nothing.