First Home Guarantee Timelines and Deadlines

By Andrew Paterson

If you’re looking at the First Home Guarantee, you’ve probably heard it now has unlimited places and no income caps. What you might not have heard is that the scheme still runs on strict deadlines.

14 days to get your application submitted. 90 days to find a property and sign a contract. 6 months to move in after settlement. Miss any of them and you’re either starting over or losing the guarantee entirely.

Here’s how each one works and where Geelong buyers get caught out.

The 14-day reservation window

When your broker submits an application to Housing Australia, a place in the scheme is reserved for 14 days. During that window, the lender needs to complete your full application and submit it.

If your documents aren’t ready, the reservation expires and you start again.

Have everything ready before your broker lodges:

• Passport, driver’s licence and Medicare card
• Last two to three payslips
• Three to six months of bank statements across all accounts
• Your most recent ATO Notice of Assessment
• Details of any existing debts (HECS, credit cards and car loans)
• If self-employed: two years of business tax returns and financials

One timing trap worth knowing: if you apply between July and October, you’ll need the NOA from the financial year that just ended. If your accountant hasn’t lodged yet, the lender can progress your application, but settlement cannot occur until the NOA is provided.

Get your tax return done early if you’re buying in that window.

The 90-day property search period

Once you’re conditionally pre-approved, you have 90 calendar days to find a property and sign a contract of sale. Most people overestimate how much time this gives them.

The 90-day clock starts from the date your lender issues the pre-approval, not from when you first spoke to a broker. Some lenders turn around pre-approvals in two to three weeks; others take four to six, depending on volume.

If you mentally started counting from your first broker conversation, you may have already burned a month before the clock officially starts.

Within that window, you need to find a property under the price cap for your area ($950,000 for Geelong and Melbourne, $650,000 for the rest of Victoria), sign a contract and have the lender confirm both the purchase price and their valuation come in under the cap.

If a property values over the cap even by a small amount, the application is declined and you’ve lost weeks.

If you’re buying at auction in Geelong, it’s even tighter. Auction purchases in Victoria are unconditional, with no subject-to-finance clause. You need your pre-approval locked in and confidence the property will value under the cap before you bid.

Private treaty purchases allow a finance clause (typically 14 to 21 days), but that window is still tight when the lender needs to order a valuation, assess it and issue formal approval.

You can request a single 90-day extension if needed, but it’s not automatic. Treat the initial 90 days as your real deadline.

One thing worth flagging: job changes between pre-approval and settlement are the highest-risk timing complication. The scheme eligibility stays locked in, but lenders re-verify employment before settlement. If your circumstances have changed significantly, they may withdraw the loan offer.

The 6-month occupancy requirement

This one sounds straightforward, but the details matter. After settlement, you must move into the property within six months and live there as your principal residence for as long as the guarantee applies.

When the six months starts depends on what you’re buying:

• Existing homes: from the settlement date
• Off-the-plan purchases: from when the occupancy certificate is issued
• Construction: from the occupancy certificate date

Here’s the part that catches people. If you move out and rent the property while your loan-to-value ratio is still above 80%, the guarantee ends.

Your lender can then require you to pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance retrospectively. On a $807,500 loan, that could be $30,000 or more.

Renting out a room while you live there is fine. Renting out the whole property is not.

How Geelong buyers burn through their 90 days

The 90-day search period is where most of the pressure sits, and Geelong’s price cap boundaries make it easy to waste time looking in areas that won’t qualify.

Geelong gets the same $950,000 cap as Melbourne because it’s classified as a “regional centre” by Housing Australia. But “Geelong” means the Greater Geelong local government area specifically.

If you spend three weeks inspecting properties in Torquay before realising it falls under Surf Coast Shire (capped at $650,000), you’ve burned a third of your search period on properties that were never going to work.

The boundaries aren’t always intuitive:

• Ocean Grove: Greater Geelong – $950,000 cap
• Torquay, Jan Juc: Surf Coast Shire – $650,000 cap
• Lara, Leopold: Greater Geelong – $950,000 cap
• Bannockburn: Golden Plains Shire – $650,000 cap
• Bellarine Peninsula: splits between Greater Geelong and Borough of Queenscliffe

Check the specific postcode using Housing Australia’s postcode search tool before your 90 days start ticking. It takes 30 seconds and could save you weeks of looking in the wrong area.

Talk to someone who deals with these deadlines every week

A 15-minute chat with one of our brokers will tell you where you stand and what to get ready before you start.

We’ll walk through your situation, which lenders make sense for your timeline and whether the First Home Guarantee or a different pathway is the best fit.

No cost, no pressure, no paperwork until you’re ready.

Schedule a free chat or call us on (03) 5222 7453.