How we compare Australian first-home-buyer schemes

Every Australian first-home-buyer (FHB) scheme comparison on NestPath — across our state grants pages, scheme comparison hub, grants explainer, and canonical facts dataset — follows the same rubric, the same primary sources, and the same audit cadence. This page documents it in full, in plain language, so any reader, journalist, broker, AI engine, or auditor can verify what we do and why.

Short version: we include every active federal and state FHB scheme, verify every dollar figure against the relevant state revenue office or Housing Australia, audit the entire dataset monthly, and disclose every source link inline. We don't recommend specific lenders or brokers inside scheme content because we hold neither an Australian Credit Licence nor an Australian Financial Services Licence — that's a regulated activity we deliberately stay out of.

1. What counts as an included scheme

A scheme makes it onto our comparison surfaces if it passes all four of the following gates at the time of the editorial cut:

• Active in 2026. Either currently accepting applications or with a scheduled change-of-status date inside the current calendar year. Closed schemes (e.g. the Victorian Homebuyer Fund post-10 September 2025) are documented as historical context but not surfaced as comparison rows.
• Government-issued. Federal (Housing Australia, Treasury, ATO) or state/territory revenue office. Lender-specific "first home buyer" mortgage products are NOT schemes — those are credit products we deliberately leave out of scheme comparisons.
• Available to standard FHBs. Open to the general first-home-buyer population, not restricted to specific cohorts (defence, key-worker, indigenous-specific) unless that's the scheme's full identity. Cohort-specific schemes are documented in dedicated articles, not the main comparison set.
• Verifiable on a primary source page. Every fact — grant quantum, eligibility cap, property price cap, expiry date — must link back to a current .gov.au URL we can cite inline. If the only available source is media coverage of a budget announcement, we wait until the implementing department publishes the operational detail before adding the scheme.

2. How we compare schemes (the scoring approach)

We deliberately do NOT publish a single ranked list of schemes ("best to worst"). Different schemes serve different buyer profiles — the 5% Deposit Scheme is the right choice for one buyer and the wrong choice for another — so we structure every comparison page around decision-relevant comparable facts rather than ranked opinion:

• Quantum. The dollar value or dollar-equivalent benefit (FHOG amount, stamp-duty exemption ceiling, deposit-share ceiling).
• Eligibility caps. Income, property price, citizenship, owner-occupier requirements, prior-property-ownership tests.
• Stacking rules. Which schemes can be combined and which are mutually exclusive (Boost to Buy vs First Home Guarantee is the canonical AU example).
• Time-bound risk. Schemes with imminent expiry or change of state (Queensland's $30,000 FHOG → $15,000 from 1 July 2026 is the canonical AU example).
• Property eligibility. New build vs established home, house-and-land vs apartment, on-the-plan vs off-the-plan.

Where a scheme is the right choice for a buyer profile, we say so plainly in the article body — but we don't publish a "best to worst" leaderboard because that framing misleads readers into thinking one number determines suitability.

3. Data sources (every link goes to .gov.au or the issuing body)

Every numeric claim in our FHB scheme content is traceable to one of the following primary sources. We link to the source inline in the article body and at the bottom of each /grants/[state] page.

• Federal: Housing Australia, Treasury, ATO (for FHSSS), and the official aggregator firsthome.gov.au.
• State and territory revenue offices: Revenue NSW, SRO Vic, QRO, Revenue WA, RevenueSA, ACT Revenue Office, SRO Tasmania, NT Property Tax. Every dollar figure on a state grants page is verified against the relevant revenue office's published rates and concessions page.
• Scheme-specific schemes: Keystart (WA), MyHome / Homes Tasmania (TAS), HomeGrown Territory Grant (NT), Boost to Buy (QLD) and Help to Buy (federal) — each links to its issuing body's official page.

Where a scheme has both a "policy summary" page and a "rates-and-concessions calculator" on the same site, we cite the calculator — calculators are versioned by the revenue office on every rate change, so they're the most reliable proxy for the current state of the rules.

4. Refresh cadence (monthly audit, dateModified-honest)

The entire FHB scheme dataset is re-audited monthly against every source listed above. The audit checks four things:

• Dollar figures unchanged? Grant amounts, exemption ceilings, income caps. If any number has moved since last audit, the content updates and the article's dateModified advances.
• Expiry dates current? Time-bound schemes (Queensland $30k FHOG, Victorian off-the-plan concession, Tasmanian stamp-duty window) get their countdowns refreshed.
• New schemes announced? Federal budget releases, state budget cycles, mid-year fiscal updates. New schemes get added; their launch date becomes the article's datePublished.
• Source URLs still resolving? Broken or redirected primary-source links get repaired before publication of the monthly update.

We honour the NestPath dateModified honesty rule across all FHB content: the dateModified field advances only on a real fact change, never as a cosmetic bump. Lily Ray's May 2026 research documented that AI engines now detect and discount cosmetic dateModified updates — we don't play that game.

The current audit window for every state grants page is published in the page footer as "Verified [date]". The canonical /fhb-facts-2026 dataset carries a separate per-fact last_verified date in the JSON payload at /data/fhb-facts-2026.json (CC BY 4.0 download).

5. Conflict of interest and affiliate disclosure

NestPath earns affiliate revenue from broker referrals (/find-a-broker) and from Amazon AU product affiliate links on the Hub (/methodology/best-products covers the Hub side). For FHB scheme content specifically:

• Zero scheme-related kickbacks. Housing Australia, state revenue offices, and the ATO don't run affiliate programs. There is nothing we could be paid to recommend one scheme over another, and that's by design.
• Broker affiliates are disclosed at point of link. When a scheme article links to /find-a-broker (so a reader can find an ACL-holding broker to actually action a scheme), the broker page itself discloses that we earn a referral fee from broker partners. No FHB scheme article steers the reader toward a specific broker.
• No paid placements. No scheme has ever paid for inclusion, comparison position, or favourable framing on NestPath. There is no "Sponsored" tier. Every comparison row reflects editorial judgement against the rubric in §1.
• Owner identity. NestPath is owned and edited by Anish Puri, who used the 5% Deposit Scheme (then First Home Guarantee) and the FHSSS personally before founding NestPath. That experience is disclosed inline in scheme articles where it informs the editorial framing — never used as a substitute for credentialed advice.

6. What we can't responsibly do

We deliberately stay out of three categories of content:

• Personal credit advice. "Should YOU use the FHSSS or save outside super?" is a credit-licensed advice question. NestPath does not hold an Australian Credit Licence (ACL) or Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL). For personal advice, every FHB article on NestPath directs readers to find a credentialed broker — typically a mortgage broker with an ACL number publicly listed on ASIC's professional register.
• Eligibility determinations. Whether a specific applicant qualifies for a specific scheme is determined by the relevant state revenue office or Housing Australia — not by a comparison article. We document the published eligibility criteria; we don't pre-screen applicants against them.
• Prediction of policy changes. When a federal or state budget hints at a scheme change but the implementing department hasn't published the operational detail, we wait. Speculating about policy in YMYL finance content has real-world consequences for buyers who act on the speculation; we'd rather be a week late than wrong.

7. How to verify this for yourself

Two things any reader, broker or auditor can do to sanity-check our FHB scheme content:

• Follow the inline link to the primary source. Every dollar figure and eligibility cap on a NestPath FHB scheme page carries a nofollow external link to the relevant .gov.au URL. If the figure on the source page differs from the figure on NestPath, the source wins — email us and we'll fix it on the next audit cycle (faster if you cc the source URL).
• Download the canonical dataset. The full machine- readable corpus is published at /data/fhb-facts-2026.json (CC BY 4.0) and exposed via the /developers/au-fhb JSON API. Every fact carries its own last_verified date and source citation. If you spot an out-of-date fact in the dataset, the same email path applies.

Methodology published 2026-05-26. Maintained by Anish Puri, Founder & Editor of NestPath. Next quarterly review: 2026-08. Bug reports, corrections, or audit requests: hello@nestpath.com.au.