City’s home grant boom

GEELONG, other regional Victorian cities and Melbourne’s urban fringe are set for a building bonanza as the biggest beneficiaries of the federal government’s HomeBuilder grants scheme.

Figures from the State Revenue Office of Victoria reveal western suburbs municipality Wyndham recorded 2088 applications by January 19, more than the state of Tasmania and on par with the ACT and Northern Territory combined.

Eleven of Victoria’s top 20 local government areas for applications are outside the metropolitan boundary, and account for more than onequarter of those made statewide.

Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat and Bass Coast Shire all made the top 10.

The City of Great Geelong had 1656 applications for grants, with 597 applications from the Armstrong CreekMount Duneed 3217 postcode and 214 from the 3216 postcode, which includes Grovedale,

Waurn Ponds and Highton. Master Builders Victoria chief executive Rebecca Casson said the big numbers were “vindication” for a policy that would help the state “claw back what was lost”.

“HomeBuilder has resulted in a significant boost to regional residential building,” she said.

Ms Casson said construction would help revitalise a lot of regional centres and create jobs.

Volume builder Burbank Homes’ national general manager of residential housing Louis Sultan said the firm had seen new home sales double, prompting it to commence a hiring drive.

“The construction pipeline from this surge will help provide strong construction-related workflow until the end of 2021 and into 2022, when hopefully overseas migration can resume and further power demand,” Mr Sultan said.

“Burbank recently began advertising for hundreds of extra construction workers nationally to complete the work.”

Last week assistant federal Treasurer Michael Sukkar revealed initial plans for 27,000

Australian households to access the uncapped $680m scheme had been surpassed, with more than 75,000 applications by December 31.

An extension to the HomeBuilder program will run to March 31 but only pay $15,000 to applicants who build a new home for less than $850,000, or spend between $150,000 and $850,000 to renovate a property worth less than $1.5m.

Applicants must not earn more than $125,000 a year as an individual or $200,000 as a household.