Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Buying a home for the first time is hard. The first hurdle you've got to cross is the 20 per cent deposit because if you can't get to 20 per cent, you've got to pay for mortgage insurance. For the average home, that could be about $30,000 more. The government's First Home Guarantee scheme helps to clear this hurdle by allowing eligible first home buyers to purchase a home with as little as five per cent deposit. You don't need to pay for costly mortgage insurance because the government guarantees some of the property's value.

Already, 760 people in my electorate have purchased homes using this scheme, and, from 1 October, we're going to expand it further so that more people can buy a home. We're going to remove income caps, and we're lifting the property caps from $900,000 to $1½ million in Sydney. The scheme will cut the time it takes to save for a deposit and will save you thousands in mortgage insurance.

Our government wants to make it easier to rent, easier to buy and easier to build more homes. In Australia, we're obsessed with big, iconic infrastructure projects—the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Snowy hydro scheme. I want making homes more affordable to be the next big major project that we can all be proud of.

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