I Calculated Every First Home Buyer Concession in Victoria. The Total Shocked Me.

A first home buyer in Victoria buying a $600,000 property can save up to $460,000 in total costs over the life of their mortgage.

Yes, four hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Not $46,000. Not $4,600. The full $460K.

I ran this calculation three times because the number seemed absurd. But the maths checks out, and I'm going to walk you through every cent of it. The savings split into two buckets: $62,000 in hard cost reductions you'll feel on settlement day, and roughly $400,000 in cumulative interest savings over a 30-year loan term.

The catch? You need to be strategic about which concessions to stack and in what order. Miss one piece and the whole structure loses potency. Get them all right and you'll pay off a $600K property in 12 to 14 years instead of 30.

Let me break it down.

Bucket 1: Hard cost savings ($62,000)

These are dollars you would have physically handed over at or around settlement if you weren't a first home buyer. They're real, tangible, gone-from-your-bank-account costs.

Stamp duty exemption: $31,000 saved

Victoria offers a full stamp duty exemption on properties valued at or below $600,000 for eligible first home buyers. Partial concessions apply up to $750,000 1. On a $600,000 purchase, the standard stamp duty bill would be approximately $31,070. As a first home buyer? Zero.

This is the single largest day-one saving. And it's worth noting that Victoria's threshold here is actually more generous than NSW, where the exemption caps at $800,000 for new homes but only $650,000 for existing properties as of 2023.

LMI waiver via 5% deposit scheme: $16,000 saved

The First Home Guarantee (formerly First Home Loan Deposit Scheme) allows eligible buyers to purchase with just a 5% deposit. The federal government guarantees up to 15% of the property value, which means the bank lends you 95% LVR without requiring Lenders Mortgage Insurance.

On a $600,000 property at 95% LVR, LMI would normally cost between $14,000 and $18,000. Under the guarantee? Zero. Since July 2023, this scheme has been expanded to include permanent residents, not just citizens 2.

One caveat: there are income caps. Singles must earn under $125,000, and couples under $200,000. Places are limited each financial year, so timing matters.

First Home Owner Grant: $10,000 cash

The Victorian FHOG provides a $10,000 cash grant for eligible first home buyers purchasing or building a new home valued at $750,000 or less 3. This doesn't apply to established homes — only new builds, off-the-plan apartments, or homes substantially renovated by a developer.

If you're buying established, you miss this one. But if your $600K property is a new build, this $10,000 goes directly to your pocket.

FHSS tax benefit: $5,000 saved

The First Home Super Saver scheme lets you make voluntary contributions to your superannuation (up to $15,000 per financial year, $50,000 total) and then withdraw them for a house deposit. The tax advantage comes from the contribution being taxed at 15% instead of your marginal rate 4.

For someone earning $90,000, putting $15,000 into super saves roughly $2,500 per financial year in tax. Do it across two financial years (you can deposit $15,000 in June and another $15,000 in July — two financial years, two months apart) and you're looking at approximately $5,000 in tax savings.

Not earth-shattering on its own, but it adds up.

Subtotal: approximately $62,000.

Bucket 2: Interest savings via Help to Buy ($401,000)

This is where the numbers get wild.

The Help to Buy scheme (expected to pass the Senate and commence in 2024) allows the government to contribute up to 30% of the purchase price for existing homes (40% for new builds) as a shared equity stake 5. You don't pay interest on the government's share. You don't make repayments on it. It just sits there.

On a $600,000 property with 30% government equity ($180,000), your mortgage drops from $570,000 (at 5% deposit) to $390,000.

Now here's the kicker. Your total hard-cost savings of $62,000 don't just vanish — if you're smart, that money sits in your offset account. Combined with the reduced principal, the interest savings compound dramatically.

Scenario A: Ordinary buyer, no concessions

• Loan: $480,000 (20% deposit on $600K)
• Interest rate: 6.0%
• Loan term: 30 years
• Total interest paid: approximately $501,000

Scenario B: First home buyer stacking everything

• Loan: $390,000 (5% deposit + 30% Help to Buy)
• Offset balance: ~$136,000 (deposit savings + stamp duty savings + FHOG + FHSS)
• Effective loan: ~$254,000 from day one
• Interest rate: 6.0%
• Loan term: paid off in ~12-14 years
• Total interest paid: approximately $100,000

The interest differential: roughly $401,000 6.

I'll let that sit for a moment.

"Most first home buyers look at concessions individually and think 'oh, nice, I save $31K on stamp duty,'" says Yan Zhu. "They don't model the cascade effect. When you reduce principal AND park savings in offset simultaneously, the interest curve collapses. A 30-year mortgage becomes a 12-year mortgage. That's not incremental — that's structural."

The total across both buckets: $62,000 hard savings plus $401,000 interest savings equals approximately $463,000.

The fine print: Help to Buy is not free money

Before you start shopping for a $600K apartment in Brunswick, let me pour some cold water on the hype.

Help to Buy is shared equity. The government owns 30% of your property. When you sell, they get 30% of the sale price — including any capital growth.

If your $600,000 property doubles to $1.2 million over 15 years, the government's 30% share is now $360,000, not $180,000. You've handed them $180,000 in growth.

So the real maths:

• Total concession savings: $463,000
• Government's growth upside (in a doubling scenario): $180,000
• Net benefit to you: $283,000

Still substantial. But not $460K.

If the property doesn't grow — say you bought a unit in an oversupplied pocket and it stays flat — you only return the original $180,000. Your full $463,000 saving is intact 7.

This creates a counterintuitive dynamic: Help to Buy actually works best for properties with limited capital growth. The government subsidises your interest cost, and if prices stay flat, you never pay the growth penalty.

Which raises a provocative question: should first home buyers using Help to Buy even be chasing growth? Or should they buy the cheapest compliant dwelling, minimise interest costs, and invest their surplus cash elsewhere?

I'll leave that for another article.

What if you're a PR, not a citizen?

Permanent residents lose access to Help to Buy. That strips out the entire $401,000 interest saving and restructures the equation significantly.

Here's what PRs still get:

• Stamp duty exemption: $31,000 (confirmed available to PRs in Victoria)
• First Home Guarantee (5% deposit, no LMI): $16,000 (PRs eligible since July 2023)
• FHOG: $10,000 (PRs eligible for new homes)
• FHSS: $5,000

Total hard savings: still $62,000.

But without Help to Buy, your loan principal stays at $570,000 (95% LVR on $600K). Monthly repayments jump from approximately $2,200 to $3,236. The loan runs its full 30-year term unless you make extra repayments 8.

The offset strategy still helps. Parking $62,000 in offset on a $570K loan at 6% saves roughly $330,000 in interest over 30 years versus a buyer who has no offset balance. That's still a massive number. But it's not the $400K compression that citizens get with Help to Buy.

So if you're a PR: stack everything you can, use offset aggressively, and consider whether buying a $600K property as your first home is even the right move.

"Honestly? If you're a PR with a $600K budget, I'd seriously question whether buying a $600K unit as your principal place of residence is the best use of that capital," says Yan Zhu. "A $600K dwelling in Melbourne is almost certainly an apartment or a small townhouse — and those don't grow. You might be better off renting where you want to live and buying a $650K investment house in the southeast that actually appreciates."

The eligibility checklist (print this)

Not everyone qualifies for everything. Here's the quick reference.

Stamp duty exemption (VIC)

• Property value: $600K or below for full exemption, up to $750K for partial
• Must be first home purchase anywhere in Australia
• Must move in within 12 months and live there for 12 continuous months
• Citizens and PRs both eligible

First Home Owner Grant ($10K)

• New home, off-the-plan, or substantially renovated only
• Property value: $750K or below
• Must be 18+, never owned property in Australia
• Citizens and PRs both eligible

First Home Guarantee (5% deposit)

• Income: singles under $125K, couples under $200K
• Must be owner-occupier
• Property value caps apply (currently $800K in Melbourne)
• Citizens and PRs eligible (from July 2023)

Help to Buy

• Income: singles under $90K, couples under $120K (proposed)
• Property value: currently proposed at $950K cap in Victoria
• Must be owner-occupier
• Australian citizens only
• 10,000 places per year nationally [9]

FHSS

• Must not have owned property in Australia
• Must request FHSS determination from ATO before signing contract
• Maximum withdrawal: $50,000
• Available to anyone with an Australian TFN

Miss any of these eligibility windows and you can't backdate. The FHSS one is particularly brutal — if you sign a contract before requesting your determination from the ATO, you're locked out entirely.

My honest take

Look, I've run these numbers for dozens of first home buyers and the pattern is always the same. People walk in thinking about how much house they can afford. They should be thinking about how much subsidy they can capture.

A $600K property with full concession stacking costs less over its lifetime than a $450K property bought without concessions. That sounds wrong, but the maths supports it.

The practical problem is execution. You need to start the FHSS contributions 12 to 24 months before purchase. You need to secure a First Home Guarantee place in the right financial year. You need to time Help to Buy enrolment with property availability. And you need to find a $600K property in Melbourne that's actually worth buying — which, as of mid-2023, means looking in the outer suburbs or regional centres like Geelong.

But if you can thread that needle, the compound effect is the closest thing to a cheat code that exists in Australian residential property.

Just don't do what most first home buyers do: spend $600K on a two-bedroom apartment in an inner-city tower with $6,000 annual strata fees and zero land content. That's using a $460K subsidy to buy a depreciating asset. Use it to buy dirt.