New Developments Update
David Shearer, New Developments Manager
Twenty one thousand dollars. It’s a lot of money. It is the largest grant the government has ever made available to first home buyers and will assist many thousands of first home buyers to achieve the goal of home ownership. The $21,000 grant is only available to those purchasing a new property, and to qualify the rules are pretty simple.
- The purchaser must be a first home buyer and an Australian resident.
- The property must never have been occupied.
- If sold “off-plan”, construction must commence within 6 months of the contract being signed, and then must be completed within 18 months of commencement.
The timing for development to commence and be completed may sound like minor issues, but even a boutique development of townhouses or apartments can easily take longer than 18 months to go from the first sod being turned, to registration of the Units’ Plan. If you have noticed a new development looking very vacant for a few months after it is obviously completed, this is not because the builder or developer has failed to sell the units (most of which probably sold well before construction started) but because once complete it regularly takes as long as 3 or 4 months for the registration of the Units’ Plan (commonly known as the Strata Title or Body Corporate) to be processed by the ACT Government’s planning authority (ACTPLA).
Obviously any first home buyer buying off-plan will require certainty that if they qualify for the $21,000 grant, they don’t then lose that opportunity because the development they purchase in doesn’t get built quickly enough.
New apartments represent the most affordable new property available to first home buyers, so the question as to whether or not first home buyers can buy the most affordable property available to take advantage of the $21,000 grant is a pertinent one.
We hope the government realises the mistake it has made in placing such an unworkable time limit on new home buyers, and relaxes or removes the timeframe for completion. Such clarification will see first home buyers able to purchase apartments which are not only far more affordably priced than new homes, but are also located close to the city or town centres, far closer to places of work, and far less reliant on cars to get to and from work and social activity.
We do have a small selection of apartments available within developments under construction where completion is assured within the current timeframes. Contact your local Independent Property Group sales office to discover what is on offer or coming soon, as many of these developments are likely to sell out well before being advertised.