The Victoria first home buyer guide.

If you're buying in Victoria and have never owned property before, the stack of concessions available to you is larger than most people realise — and the interactions between them matter. The First Home Owner Grant, Victorian stamp duty exemption/concession, and the federal Home Guarantee Scheme each have different eligibility criteria, different price caps, and different impacts on your total out-of-pocket cost. Layered correctly, they can remove tens of thousands from what a first home really costs you on settlement.

This guide works through each of them in plain English, with the eligibility rules as they stand for 2026. Before acting on any of it, confirm the rules haven't moved — government schemes change more often than most people track.

The second big decision is how much deposit to actually save before buying. The three common paths are the 5% path (Home Guarantee Scheme or LMI), the 10% path (capitalised LMI, smaller stress on cashflow), and the 20% path (no LMI, better rate, more lender choice). The right path depends on current market conditions, your saving rate, your job stability, and the price bracket you're targeting.

We model all three paths in a discovery call with real numbers. For most first home buyers in 2026, the Home Guarantee Scheme path is the most capital-efficient if you qualify — waiting three years to save an additional 15% often means the price has run away from you by more than the LMI would have cost.

Before you set foot in an auction, you need formal pre-approval. That means a credit-checked, income-verified position from a specific lender — not an online calculator estimate. A formal pre-approval typically lasts 90 days and allows you to bid at auction without a finance clause. It also locks in the lender's current policy interpretation of your situation, which is valuable if policies are tightening.

The most common first-home-buyer mistake is bidding without formal pre-approval, winning, and then scrambling to put finance together before the cooling-off period ends. Even when it works, the stress is unnecessary. Sorting pre-approval first is always the cleaner path.

Once contracts exchange, your broker and conveyancer run the process from there. Settlement is typically 30-45 days after contract, with loan documents issued 1-2 weeks before settlement. You'll sign mortgage documents, the lender advances funds on settlement day, your conveyancer handles registration and balance of purchase price, and the keys hand over.

What happens after settlement is where most brokers go quiet — and where Hypercube stays loud. Annual rate reviews, life-change reviews, and a broker who actually answers the phone five years later are the part of the service most first home buyers don't know to ask about, but will quietly save them thousands over the loan's life.