<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <docID>340898</docID> <postdate>2025-03-22 13:06:28</postdate> <headline>Labor to expand signature Help to Buy housing scheme</headline> <body><p><img class="size-full wp-image-280673" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/20221110001728108238-original-resized.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="800" /></p> <caption>Under changes to the Help to Buy scheme, the Albanese Labor government will lift income and price caps to make it easier for first-time buyers to secure a home. (Bianca De Marchi/AAP PHOTOS)</caption> <p><span class="kicker-line">By <strong>Jacob Shteyman</strong> and <strong>Samantha Lock</strong> in Canberra</span></p> <p><strong>A signature housing policy is set to be expanded to higher income earners to give more Australians a leg-up into the market, the government says ahead of its fourth federal budget.</strong></p> <p>Under changes to the Help to Buy scheme, the Albanese Labor government will lift income and price caps to make it easier for first-time buyers to secure a home.</p> <p>It means single parents and couples earning up to $160,000 will be able to buy million-dollar homes in some of Australia's biggest cities with a minimum two per cent deposit if they co-purchase them with the government.</p> <p>Housing Minister Clare O'Neil said the shared equity program would allow 40,000 eligible buyers "who would otherwise have no chance of home ownership" to secure a home with federal government contribution.</p> <p>"We've got a generation of young people growing up in our country who can't see a pathway to home ownership, and our government wants to change that," she told reporters on Saturday.</p> <p>With equity assistance of 40 per cent for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes, homebuyers would be able to buy with a smaller deposit and mortgage.</p> <p>The scheme was previously only eligible to singles earning up to $90,000 and couples or households with a combined income of up to $120,000.</p> <p>The income threshold will be bumped up to $100,000 for singles and $160,000 for combined incomes and single parents.</p> <p>The maximum price of a home eligible to participants will also be raised from $950,000 to $1.3 million in Sydney, from $850,000 to $950,000 in Melbourne and from $700,000 to $1 million in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.</p> <p>Price caps in rural areas will also increase.</p> <p>The government has also pledged to speed-up housing construction with a $54 million investment in manufacturing prefabricated and modular home construction.</p> <p>"We've got a big goal to build 1.2 million new homes in five years and to reach that we need to build homes in new ways - using methods like prefab we can build homes up to 50 per cent faster," Ms O'Neil said.</p> <p>Cost-of-living relief will be the other big budget focus, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said.</p> <p>"So it will have that familiar combination of relief, repair and reform in the fourth budget, the same as it did in the third," he told reporters on Friday.</p> <p>"It will be a very responsible budget."</p> <p>After a surplus of $15.8 billion in 2023/24, Commonwealth Bank's new chief economist Luke Yeaman expects to see an underlying budget cash balance that's $22.5 billion in the red for 2024/25.</p> <p>That's at least an improvement on the $26.9 deficit predicted in the December mid-year update.</p> <p>Veteran economist Saul Eslake says the run-up to the budget has been one of the most low-key he's observed in his 45-year career.</p> <p>He predicts it will almost certainly include some additional energy bill relief.</p> <p>There's no provision to extend the existing $300 rebates for households and $325 for businesses, meaning prices will skyrocket when they run out at the end of June.</p> <p>And consumers are set for more bill shock after the Australian Energy Regulator's recommendation to allow benchmark electricity prices to rise by up to 8.9 per cent.</p> <p>The government faces a delicate balancing act, said Mr Yeaman, who until recently was intimately involved in delivering the budget as Treasury deputy secretary.</p> <p>"There will be pressure to loosen the purse strings further weeks out from an election campaign," he told AAP.</p> <p>"However, too much spending risks undermining claims of 'responsible economic management' and giving the RBA a potential excuse to delay further interest rate cuts."</p> </body>