WA first home buyers
WA First Home Owner Grant
The First Home Owner Grant is a Western Australian government payment for people buying or building their first home, available on new and substantially renovated properties that meet the eligibility rules set by RevenueWA.
Your Mortgage Broker Mount Pleasant explains the scheme below for buyers in and around Mount Pleasant, including where the value cap bites locally and how the grant interacts with transfer duty relief. The page covers eligibility, property types, applications, common knock-backs and the local property market.
What It Is Worth Right Now
The grant pays up to $10,000 as a one-off payment per eligible transaction, or the consideration paid if that is less. It has sat at that figure for years, which makes it easy to assume nothing else has moved. Two things changed recently, and both matter more than the payment itself.
For transactions on or after 7 May 2026, the value cap south of the 26th parallel, which covers every Perth suburb including Mount Pleasant, rose to $800,000, up from the $750,000 that applied to earlier contracts. North of the parallel the cap is $1,000,000. Separately, the first home owner rate of duty was restructured so that no transfer duty applies to homes with a dutiable value up to $600,000 from the same date.
The trap is stale content. Older pages still quote the old cap and an old duty threshold, and a buyer who budgets against either can discover at contract stage that the figures have moved. Check everything against RevenueWA before you rely on it, and treat this page as a summary rather than a substitute for the source.
Who Qualifies
The eligibility rules are set by the First Home Owner Grant scheme and applied by RevenueWA. The main tests are these:
Property type
Value cap
Age and applicant structure
Citizenship or residency
No prior grant
No prior property ownership
Occupancy
No means test
Which Properties It Covers
The grant and the duty concession cover different property types, and the table below separates them:
| Property type | Grant available? | First home owner rate of duty? |
|---|---|---|
| New home under $600,000 | Yes, if eligible | No duty payable |
| New home $600,001 to $800,000 | Yes, if under the cap | Concessional duty applies |
| Established home | No, never | No duty up to $600,000, concessions to $800,000 |
| Vacant land to $450,000 | Yes, if you build | No duty payable |
| Vacant land $450,001 to $550,000 | Yes, if you build | Concessional duty applies |
The critical point is that the two schemes are administered separately. A buyer over the grant cap can still claim the duty concession, and an established home buyer gets no grant but can still access the first home owner rate of duty up to $800,000. Budget for each scheme on its own terms.
Why The Rule Bites Here
A statewide cap behaves very differently depending on where you shop, and Mount Pleasant is close to the hard end of that distribution.
Established Houses Sit Above the Cap
The suburb's housing stock skews towards family homes, with most dwellings being separate houses and a large share offering four or more bedrooms. Typical established house prices in a riverside suburb eight-odd kilometres from the CBD sit well beyond the $800,000 grant cap, so an established-house purchase here is doubly excluded: no grant on property type, and likely over the cap anyway.
New Stock Is Where the Grant Lives
The grant is realistically a new-build play in this suburb, and the pipeline exists. Dwelling approvals totalled 846 across the last five years, placing building activity in the state's top band by percentile. New apartments and house-and-land style products under the cap are where an eligible buyer can actually collect the $10,000.
The Gap Between Eligible and Desirable
Eligibility and livability are different questions. A cap-compliant new apartment in a suburb where flats make up a modest share of dwellings is a very different proposition to the established family home most first buyers picture. Decide early whether the grant matters more to you than the suburb, because in Mount Pleasant you will rarely maximise both.
What This Means For Your Search
Buyers chasing the grant here should orient towards new developments, off-the-plan style purchases or knockdown-rebuild routes, and consider whether neighbouring suburbs widen the options. Our first home buyer loans page walks through the lending side, and our construction loans page covers how a build is funded stage by stage.
How It Stacks With Duty Relief
The grant is only half the first-buyer money on the table. The first home owner rate of duty is a separate scheme under the duties fact sheet, and stacking them correctly changes your upfront cash position:
No duty on modest homes
Concessional duty above that
Vacant land has its own bands
Established homes still qualify for duty relief
The cap and the threshold are different numbers
How it works
How To Apply And When Money Arrives
The application itself is not difficult. The timing and the paperwork are where buyers lose weeks.
- 1
Choose Your Lodgement Route
Applications go online with RevenueWA or through an approved agent, which in practice usually means your lender lodging the grant application alongside the home loan. The lender route bundles the paperwork with settlement, while lodging directly keeps the process in your own hands.
- 2
Gather the Right Evidence
Expect to prove identity, citizenship or residency, and the contract details for the purchase or build. If you are buying with someone else, both applicants' documents are needed, because eligibility is assessed for each applicant even though only one grant is paid.
- 3
Mind the Completion Date
Everything keys off the completion date of the eligible transaction. The grant is paid once that transaction completes, and RevenueWA does not publish fixed payment timelines for different purchase types, so treat any promised date with caution and build your cash flow around settlement rather than the grant arriving.
- 4
Lodge Within Twelve Months
The application deadline is within 12 months of the completion date. Miss it and the entitlement lapses, no matter how clean the eligibility was. Diarise the date the day you sign.
Worth knowing early
What Gets An Application Knocked Back
RevenueWA declines applications for reasons that are almost all avoidable at contract stage. The published rules point to these common failures:
- Buying established Signing a contract for an established home and expecting the grant. The property-type exclusion is longstanding, and buyers are still caught by it every year.
- Breach of the cap A contract price or value over $800,000 south of the 26th parallel, sometimes by a small margin discovered too late to renegotiate.
- Occupancy failures Not living in the home for six continuous months, or starting occupation later than 12 months after completion, either of which forfeits the entitlement.
- Prior ownership An applicant who has owned property before 1 July 2000, or owned and occupied one for six months or more on or after 1 July 2004.
- A previous grant Any applicant who has already received a first home owner grant anywhere in Australia.
- Conflating the two schemes Assuming the grant cap and the duty thresholds are the same thing. They are separate schemes with different figures, and confusion here leads to mispriced purchases.
Where we work
Areas We Service
Your Mortgage Broker Mount Pleasant is a Mount Pleasant mortgage broking business serving the surrounding City of Melville riverside suburbs, and you can read more about the person behind the licence on our About page. We work with first home buyers in Applecross, Como, Salter Point, Rossmoyne, Brentwood and Booragoon, where new stock and duty thresholds shape very different buyer strategies suburb by suburb.
Questions answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is the WA First Home Owner Grant worth?
The grant pays up to $10,000 as a one-off payment per eligible transaction, or the purchase price if that is lower. Two co-buyers share a single grant rather than each receiving one.
Can I get the grant on an established home?
No. Contracts for established homes have been excluded from the grant for many years, which leaves it limited to new and substantially renovated homes. An established home attracts no grant at any price, though it can still qualify for duty relief.
What is the property price cap for the grant?
South of the 26th parallel, including all of Perth, the cap is $800,000 for transactions on or after 7 May 2026. North of the parallel it is $1,000,000.
Do I have to live in the property to keep the grant?
Yes. You must occupy the home as your principal place of residence for at least six continuous months, starting within 12 months of the transaction completing.
Is the grant different from stamp duty relief?
Yes, they are separate schemes with separate thresholds. The duty concession covers established homes and vacant land as well as new homes, and its no-duty threshold sits below the grant cap.
How long does the grant take to arrive?
RevenueWA does not publish fixed payment dates. The grant is paid once the eligible transaction completes, and applications must be lodged within 12 months of that completion date.
Mortgage broker for Mount Pleasant and the suburbs around it
Get In Touch
If you are weighing a new build against an established purchase and want the grant and duty numbers worked into your borrowing plan, call (08) 6311 4000. You will speak with a broker accountable by name, working across a panel of lenders, with published fees and no obligation at the first conversation.