Everything You Should Know About The Australian Government Building Grants 2020

The Australian Government announced a $25,000 HomeBuilder grant in 2020 for eligible owner-occupiers to help build a new home or substantially renovate their existing home. The government recently increased the construction start-up time from six to 18 months. Covid-19 had brought a massive change (and is still ongoing) to the world, many sectors have been affected by the pandemic, such as travel limitations, stagnant businesses and strict implementation of health preventive measures.

The whole world is in healing mode; no warm hug is allowed as people are being distant from each other, cutting down every possible outside activity to reduce the spread of the virus. Several State governments of Australia have released some responses and are giving support to the community due to the pandemic. Renovation and housing construction are mainly aimed to support the industry. 

However, just who is eligible for the grant and what are the requirements? Here are the requirements that you should meet:

• Has Australian citizenship
• Australian singles or couples may apply
• Singles should earn $125,000 or less in a year, and couples should earn less than $200,000 in a year (it is all counted by the recent financial year of 2018-2019)
• An owner-occupier of a certified house, that must be not more than $1.5 million worth, and it is not a rental or investment house
• If you’re considering building a new house, the worth should not be more than $750,000 (including the land)
• The worth of the renovation project must be between  $150,000 and $750,000, and the house that will be renovated must be worth less than $1.5 million
• The improvement of accessibility, livability and dedication to the family’s safety must be the main goal of the renovation project. Anything that is not connected to the house, such as the swimming pool, garage, or tennis court is not allowed and included.
• The contract should be signed between 4 June and 31 December 2020 and the project has to be started within three months of the date in the signed contract.

Subsequently, if you are qualified, there are several requirements aside from the contract that you should meet. For example, the contract should be negotiated at a fair market price, to avoid people from asking the builder to mark up the costs in order you can get the grant. The Government’s HomeBuilder scheme also requires that the contractor should not be anyone you have a relationship with, such as family.

The project should be handled by a certified builder, depending on which state or territory you are in. Moreover, if you are sceptical that your builder has marked up the prices by cause of these grants, you should ask them to show the cost and compare it to a similar project last July, whether it is the same or lower. There are also some factors that you should consider.

Some essential things need to be considered whether you will renovate your house:

• You should think carefully and calculate your current potential of earning and later when you are retired. It will give you a better understanding of whether you will borrow or afford something.
• The distance between your working place and school is also a thing you should consider. If you plan to stay, you will enjoy the benefit of the house renovation.
• You need to take a look at your property’s worth and regularly check how much the price of other similar local properties near your area with an extra bathroom or bedroom. It will give you some ideas of what kind of additional value you want to present in your house in Perth through the renovation with the help of Perth Skip Bin hire to manage the construction debris.
• Features such as energy efficiency may be installed to support your house in Perth as energy costs will increase. The renovation will come with a major transformation of your house and it needs Perth Skip Bin to hire to help you with the waste management. This sophistication will bring more value to your house over time.
• When you are renovating your house, the cleanliness of your surroundings should be one main things that you are concerned about. It is needed to use a skip bin rental service to manage all the waste disposal.
• Calculating the renovation expense can be complicated following a lot of things you should consider. Thus, you should be more efficient and you should use the cheapest skip bin hire in Perth if you are in the region.

Conclusion

After reading the article you should have understood more about the HomeBuilder stimulus scheme and it is very understandable how people are intrigued by the Federal GGovernment’soffer. Moreover, if you are a qualified applicant, have you decided between house renovation or building a new one?

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