MORE than 2,600 home buyers in the Ipswich region have taken advantage of the Federal Government’s expanded Home Guarantee Scheme. 

With 1,696 HGS certificates issued to 2,631 individuals in Ipswich since May 2022, the region has had one of the highest rates of take-up nationally.

The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation’s Trends and Insights report shows the expanded HGS helped 41,700 Australians to purchase a home in 2022-23.

In addition, the enhanced HGS is assisting more essential workers, such as teachers, nurses and social workers, to purchase a home with around 7,721 guarantees issued to key workers in 2022-23, up 37 percent from 2021–22.

According to the research, the HGS is also helping more young people into home ownership, with more than one in two places taken up by people under the age of 30, up from around one in three in 2019-20.

The HGS provides a government guarantee of up to 15 per cent for eligible home buyers, so people with a deposit of as little as five per cent can avoid paying lenders’ mortgage insurance. 

The Government has expanded eligibility criteria for the HGS to help even more Australians, with friends, siblings, and other family members eligible for joint applications from July this year.

The scheme has also been extended to non-first home buyers who have not owned a property in Australia in the last 10 years, which supports those who have fallen out of home ownership, often due to financial crisis or relationship breakdown.