Help to Buy Explained: When the Government Co-Owns Your Home

If you buy a home through the federal Help to Buy scheme, you might not be the only owner of it. In exchange for a smaller loan and a tiny deposit, the government takes an ownership share in your home — and that share behaves differently from a normal loan. Here's what it actually means, in plain English, with the figures current as of July 2026.

What Help to Buy is

Help to Buy is a national shared-equity scheme administered by Housing Australia. Instead of lending you money you repay with interest, the government takes a slice of ownership in the property.

As of 1 July 2026, the scheme's key features are:

• The government contributes up to 40% of the purchase price for a new home, or up to 30% for an existing home.
• You can get in with a deposit of as little as 2%.
• Income eligibility caps are $103,000 for singles and $165,000 for joint applicants and single parents (both raised on 1 July 2026 as the scheme expanded).
• Property price caps apply and are set for each state and territory to reflect local markets — check the current cap for your area on the official scheme page.

The government's contribution isn't a repayment loan. It's an equity share secured by a second mortgage — which is the part that trips people up.

What the equity share means day-to-day

The upside is immediate and real: because the government funds a big chunk of the price, your loan is smaller, so your deposit and monthly repayments are lower than they'd otherwise be. For many first-home buyers that's the difference between buying now and not buying for years.

The trade-off is that you have a co-owner on your title. You live in the home and control it, but you don't own 100% of it — and that matters most at the end, not the beginning.

The bit people miss: exit and buyback

Here's the crucial detail. When you eventually sell, or choose to buy back the government's share, you don't repay the dollar amount they put in. You repay their percentage of the home's current value.

Because the government owns a percentage, its stake grows with your home.

Worked example. You buy an existing home for $600,000, with the government taking a 30% share — that's $180,000 at purchase.

Years later the home is worth $800,000. To buy back the government's 30% share, you now repay 30% of $800,000 = $240,000, not the original $180,000.

The government shared in the deposit and in the growth. That's not a catch — it's how shared equity works, and it's a fair deal for the leg-up it gives — but it's essential to understand before you sign, because it changes what a future buyback or sale actually costs.

How it sits alongside other schemes

Help to Buy is one of several first-home support programs, and they do different things:

• First Home Guarantee — lets you buy with a low deposit and no lender's mortgage insurance, but the government does not take an equity share (it guarantees part of your loan instead).
• State homebuyer funds — some states run their own shared-equity schemes (such as the Victorian Homebuyer Fund) that work on similar equity-share principles.

The defining feature of Help to Buy is the equity share — the government becomes a part-owner, not just a guarantor.

Keep the ownership maths straight

Because your real ownership percentage stays fixed while the dollar value of everyone's share moves with the market, it's worth tracking what a buyback would actually cost as values change — so a future exit is never a surprise.

Propact's scheme-buyback calculator does this for you: enter the purchase price, the government's share, and a current value, and it shows what buying back that share would cost today.

See what buying back the government's share could cost → free calculator

You can also track your real ownership share over time in the demo.

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This article is general information, not legal, financial or tax advice, and does not assess whether any scheme is right for you. Scheme figures, caps, and eligibility change — confirm the current details with Housing Australia and moneysmart.gov.au, and speak to a participating lender or broker about eligibility. Figures current as of July 2026.