Can permanent residents buy a first home in Australia — and get the grants?

The short answer: yes. As a permanent resident you can buy an established home without FIRB approval, you're not charged Victoria's 8% foreign purchaser surcharge (that applies to temporary residents and foreign buyers, not you), and you're now eligible for the main first-home schemes — including the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme (formerly the First Home Guarantee), which lets you buy with a 5% deposit and no LMI, and Victoria's first home buyer duty exemption or concession. For most new permanent residents, the real hurdle isn't what you qualify for — it's finding that out, and a thin local credit history.

Meet Amir and Sara

Amir and Sara are engineers in their mid-thirties. They've been permanent residents for two years, they rent in Melbourne's southeast, and they don't have family in Australia who've done any of this before. They're looking at homes around $700,000–$850,000 — close to community and a mosque, on a direct train line, with room to host the friends who've become their family here.

They'd been quietly saving for their first home for years — and quietly assuming a lot of it wasn't for them. "The first home buyer stuff is for citizens," Amir had decided, without ever quite checking. They braced for a foreign surcharge they'd heard about, half-expected to be locked out of the grants, and got three different answers from three different people about what they were even allowed to do. So they did what a lot of new arrivals do: they put it off, and kept renting.

The thing is, almost none of what they feared was true.

Amir and Sara aren't real people — but their situation is. Every rule and number in this story is real and linked to its source below.

First, the fear that wasn't true: the foreign surcharge

Victoria charges an extra 8% "foreign purchaser additional duty" on top of normal stamp duty, and it's the number that scares a lot of migrants off buying. But read the word carefully: it applies to foreign purchasers. A permanent resident is not a foreign purchaser for this duty — hold a permanent visa and the surcharge simply doesn't apply to you. The rules are on the State Revenue Office.

Who does pay it? Temporary residents and foreign buyers. So the surcharge Amir and Sara had been dreading — potentially tens of thousands of dollars on an $800,000 home — was never theirs to pay. That one fact changed their whole sense of what was possible.

Can you even buy the home you want?

The other quiet fear: whether they were allowed to buy an established house at all. Here permanent residency matters again. Permanent residents don't need FIRB (Foreign Investment Review Board) approval to buy a home to live in — you buy like a citizen. It's temporary residents who face FIRB approval and, under current rules, tight limits on buying established homes. You can confirm your position at FIRB. For Amir and Sara, PRs of two years, the established townhouse near the mosque was never off-limits.

The schemes you're actually eligible for

This is where the picture turned from "probably not for us" to "actually, yes." The First Home Guarantee — the federal scheme that lets eligible first home buyers purchase with a 5% deposit and no Lenders' Mortgage Insurance — is now open to permanent residents, not only citizens. And from 1 October 2025, the scheme removed its place limits and income caps, so more buyers can use it. The current rules live with Housing Australia.

On top of that, as PRs they qualify — the same as citizens — for Victoria's first home buyer duty exemption or concession (no stamp duty up to $600,000, a concession to $750,000), detailed at the State Revenue Office, and for the First Home Owner Grant on new builds.

Suddenly the maths looked nothing like the version in their heads: no surcharge, a 5% deposit instead of 20%, and a duty exemption within reach if they bought under the threshold.

The real hurdle: a thin credit file, and no one to ask

What was real: after two years, Amir and Sara had a thinner Australian credit history than a lender likes to see — no decade of local cards and loans to point to. That's a genuine consideration, and it's worth understanding how lenders read it (the mechanics are at Moneysmart); it's rarely a wall, but it shapes the conversation.

And the deeper hurdle was the one no scheme fixes: no one to make sense of it all. No parent who'd bought here, no friend three steps ahead, no one to say this is your next move, and here's the risk to watch before you make it. They weren't doing anything wrong. The system just assumes you already know it.

How it played out

The surprise wasn't that Amir and Sara didn't qualify. It's that they qualified for far more than they'd let themselves believe — and had nearly talked themselves out of a home they were entitled to buy, over rules that didn't apply to them.

The question that actually mattered, once the fear cleared, wasn't "are we allowed?" It was quieter and more useful: which of these applies to us — and in what order do we do them? Eligibility was never the barrier. Information was.

If you're like Amir and Sara

We've been there — new here, starting from scratch, without the generational knowledge of how any of this works, and plenty we got wrong along the way. You don't have to. Havenli maps what you actually qualify for onto your real situation, in plain terms with every claim linked to its source — then walks it with you in order: money, suburb, property, and the right professionals, all in one place. It tells you your next step and the risk to know before you take it — and if you're not ready yet, you'll know, without guessing. See how Havenli works, or start with how much deposit you really need.

This story is general information, not financial, legal, migration or taxation advice — Amir and Sara aren't real people, their numbers are illustrative, and your circumstances will differ. Visa status, scheme rules, caps and duties change and depend on your individual situation; always confirm the current details with the official sources linked above, and talk to a licensed professional for advice on yours.