The $30,000 First Home Buyers Grant, QLD: who gets it and how.

The eligibility tests, in plain English.

To qualify for the FHOG QLD:

• You're a person (not a company or trust), 18 or older
• You or a co-applicant is an Australian citizen or permanent resident
• Neither you nor your spouse has received a First Home Owner Grant anywhere in Australia
• Neither of you has previously owned and lived in an Australian property (owning an investment you never lived in can be OK)
• The home is new: a new build, off the plan, or substantially renovated (cosmetic work doesn't count)
• Total value (home plus land) is under $750,000, including any contract variations
• You'll live in it for at least six continuous months within the first year

Two of those tests catch more people than the rest combined. The prior-ownership test turns on dates as well as occupation: property owned on or after 1 July 2000 only counts against you if you lived in it, while anything owned before 1 July 2000 counts whether you lived in it or not, and your spouse's history is treated as yours even if they are not on the contract. And the value cap is "less than" $750,000 including land and any contract variations, so a build that starts at $735,000 and picks up $20,000 of upgrades has moved out of the grant, not into a smaller one. It is all or nothing.

What the whole stack is worth, by scenario.

The grant and the duty concession are separate schemes with different rules, and the combination is what actually decides your deposit. Every figure below is generated from the QRO's published duty rates and concession tables and the grant rules the checker above runs, so the table and the tools agree.

Three cliffs are visible in that table. A new build at $749,000 collects the grant and pays no duty; the same build at $750,000 collects nothing, because the cap is "less than" $750,000. An established home at $700,000 pays no duty, while at $800,000 the concession is gone entirely. And a new build at $850,000 still pays zero duty, because the duty concession for new homes has no price cap at all even though the grant does. The stamp duty calculator runs your exact price against those bands.

What counts as a new home.

The grant is for homes that have not been lived in. That covers a house you build, a house and land package, an off-the-plan apartment, and a home a builder has completed but never sold or occupied. It does not cover a renovation of a house you already own, and it does not cover a tidy-up that a seller calls a renovation.

"Substantially renovated" is a defined term, not a judgement call: the QRO looks for a renovation that is a taxable supply for GST purposes, where most of the building has been removed or replaced, and where the home has not been occupied or sold as a residence since the work. New paint, new floors and a new kitchen do not get there. If a listing is marketing a renovation as grant-eligible, the vendor's statement is the document that decides it, and it is worth getting sight of before the contract rather than after.

Stamp duty: the saving that stacks on top.

The grant gets the headlines, but the stamp duty rules changed on 1 May 2025 and they're now often worth more: first home buyers building or buying a new home in Queensland pay no transfer duty at all, with no price cap. Buying an established home? The first-home concession applies in full up to $700,000 and then steps down in $10,000 price bands until it disappears at $800,000. Buying vacant land to build on? Since 1 May 2025 that is a full concession too, with no value cap, provided you build and move in within two years of settlement. (Official thresholds: qld.gov.au, and our stamp duty calculator runs your numbers in seconds.)

One change worth knowing about if your residency status is anything other than straightforward: from 1 August 2026, claiming any transfer duty home concession, first home concession or first home vacant land concession in Queensland requires you to be an Australian citizen, permanent resident or a specified foreign retiree. That aligns the duty concessions with the grant, which has always carried a citizenship or permanent residency test. Source: qro.qld.gov.au.

How to apply, and when the money lands.

The practical path: apply through your lender with the loan, so the grant is approved alongside the finance and available when you need it: at settlement for a purchase, or at the first progress payment for a build. We prepare the application and the supporting documents (ID, contract, and the build paperwork for construction) as part of the loan, at no charge. Prefer to do it yourself? Applications go to the Queensland Revenue Office directly.

Timing is where builds get uncomfortable, so it is worth being blunt about it. On a construction loan the land settles first, the builder draws progress payments in stages, and you pay interest only on what has been drawn. The grant arrives at the first progress payment after the slab, not at land settlement, so it cannot be your deposit on the land. Plan the cash for the land, the duty and the early draws separately from the grant, and the build stops being a cash-flow problem.

The residence rule, and what happens if you break it.

The grant is conditional on living in the home: six continuous months, starting within a year of the completed transaction. For the transfer duty concessions the test is a separate one and slightly different, which is the part that catches people. You must move in within a year of settlement, you cannot lease any part of the home before you move in, and you cannot lease the whole home within the first year of occupying it. Since 10 September 2024 you can rent out part of the home (a room, a granny flat) while you continue to live there without losing the duty concession.

Break either rule and the benefit is reassessed and repaid, with unpaid tax interest and penalties possible on top. Two situations are worth thinking about before you claim rather than after: a job that might move interstate inside twelve months, and a plan to rent the place out and live elsewhere, which is a rentvesting strategy and is incompatible with both benefits in year one. Telling the QRO when plans change costs far less than being found later.

The full first-home stack.

Line all four up before you look at listings:

• First Home Owner Grant: $30,000 toward a new home (this page)
• Stamp duty relief: zero duty on new homes and first-home vacant land; concessions to $800k on established
• First Home Guarantee: buy with 5% deposit and no LMI, now without income caps
• First Home Super Saver: release voluntary super contributions for the deposit

They interact, which is why the order matters. The First Home Super Saver scheme needs the contributions made well before you buy, so it is the one to start earliest. The First Home Guarantee decides whether you need 5% or 20%, which changes the savings target the other three are working toward. Duty relief decides how much of your savings survives settlement day. And the grant lands last, at settlement or at the slab. Run the numbers on the borrowing power estimator to find the price bracket that is real for your income, then the rest of the calculators and checks for repayments, duty and LMI. When you want it sequenced properly against a real property, the first home buyer loan page explains how we do it.