Boost to Buy: How Queensland's Shared Equity Scheme Works for Fraser Coast Buyers

Boost to Buy is a Queensland Government shared equity scheme that’s had less local coverage than it probably deserves, given what it actually offers first home buyers: a government contribution toward your purchase price in exchange for the government holding a stake in your home. It’s a genuinely different mechanism to the First Home Guarantee or the First Home Owner Grant, and it’s worth understanding properly before treating it as free money.

How it works

Under Boost to Buy, the Queensland Government contributes equity toward your home purchase — up to 30% for a new home, or up to 25% for an established home — reducing how much you need to borrow and how large a deposit you need up front. The minimum deposit is 2% of the purchase price. No interest is charged on the government’s contribution while you hold it.

The trade-off is what happens later. When you sell the property, refinance, or otherwise pay out the arrangement, you repay the government’s share based on the property’s value at that time, not the dollar amount they originally put in. If your home has gone up in value, the government’s 25–30% stake is worth more in dollar terms too — so the scheme isn’t a fixed-cost loan, it’s a genuine equity partnership that shares in both the risk and the upside. You can also make extra voluntary repayments at any time to buy back the government’s equity earlier.

Who qualifies

• You must be a first home buyer intending to live in the property
• Individual applicants: income up to $155,000 a year
• Couples, or a single applicant with dependants: combined income up to $232,000 a year
• Property price cap of $1,000,000
• Minimum 2% deposit

Given typical purchase prices across Hervey Bay and Maryborough, the price cap isn’t the sticking point here that it might be in Brisbane — the income caps and the equity trade-off are the parts worth thinking through properly.

Why this matters more for regional buyers right now

Boost to Buy places are released in rounds, split between Southeast Queensland and the rest of the state, and it’s been in high demand — Southeast Queensland’s allocation from the current round has already been exhausted. Regional Queensland places, which cover the whole Fraser Coast, have generally still been available when SEQ’s have run out. Government scheme allocations move quickly and can change without much notice, so if this is relevant to you, the current status is worth confirming rather than assuming either way.

The catch worth knowing about before you get excited

Boost to Buy is currently only available through one lender: Unity Bank, a member-owned mutual bank. You apply to them directly and they handle the application on the government’s behalf. That matters for two reasons. First, it means we can’t submit a Boost to Buy application for you the way we can with our broader lender panel — it sits outside it by design. Second, it means the right comparison isn’t “Boost to Buy vs. nothing” — it’s Boost to Buy through one lender’s product and servicing criteria versus what the rest of the market, including the First Home Guarantee’s LMI waiver, would get you on a 5% deposit with full ownership from day one. Which is genuinely better depends on your income, how long you plan to keep the property, and how you feel about sharing future equity growth — there’s no single right answer.

Where a broker still helps, even on a scheme we can’t submit

We can’t put a Boost to Buy application through ourselves, but we can model what your numbers actually look like under it versus the alternatives — First Home Guarantee, a standard 20% deposit loan, or a family guarantee — before you commit to a structure that dilutes your equity for as long as you own the home. If you’re weighing this up in Pialba, Scarness, Maryborough or anywhere else across the region, that’s exactly the kind of comparison we work through in a free first home buyer assessment. It’s also worth reading alongside our guides to the First Home Guarantee and the Queensland First Home Owner Grant, since most buyers end up choosing between these options rather than combining all three.