Buying your public housing home

Check if you can buy your home

You may be able to buy your home if you have been a Housing ACT tenant for at least 3 years.

You’ll pay:

• the market price for the home
• an administration fee
• standard costs of buying a home, like stamp duty, legal fees and mortgage protection insurance.

You cannot buy your home if:

• Housing ACT bought it or upgraded it in the last 5 years
• Housing ACT is going to redevelop it
• it was built less than 10 years ago
• it is in an area where Housing ACT does not own many homes
• it does not have a separate title, for example a flat or apartment
• you owe rent to Housing ACT.

Ways to buy your home

There are 2 ways to buy your Housing ACT home:

• Sale to Tenant Scheme
• Shared Equity Scheme

Buying steps

For both schemes:

1. You must register your interest to buy your home.
2. We’ll give you a list of recent sales near your home, so you know the price of similar homes.
3. You must get pre-approval for a loan.
4. We’ll get the property valued, consider any improvements you’ve made and let you know the sale price. Read Guidelines for Property Valuations to learn how we value properties.
5. We’ll get a building inspection, pest and energy rating reports.
6. We’ll send you a Letter of Offer and an Acceptance of Offer form.
7. You'll exchange contracts for sale with Housing ACT.

There are extra steps in each buying process. Read about the buying process under in each scheme.

Sale to Tenant Scheme

If your public housing home is available for sale, the sale price of your property will be the current market valuation.

Read more about the buying process for the Sale to Tenant Scheme.

To register your interest to buy your Housing ACT home through the Sale to Tenant Scheme:

1. Download and fill in the Sale to Tenant Scheme registration of interest form.
2. Email the form to Capital.Team@act.gov.au

Shared Equity Scheme

You’ll buy 70% of your home using a loan from IMB Bank. Housing ACT will own the other 30% of your home’s value until you repay it.

Your repayments to Housing ACT will be a percentage of the home's market value at the time you make the repayment. This means you and Housing ACT will share in increases or decreases in the property's value.

You must make at least 2 repayments to Housing ACT, one at 5 years and one at 15 years.

Read more about the buying process for the Shared Equity Scheme.

To register your interest to buy your Housing ACT home through the Shared Equity Scheme:

1. Download and fill in the Shared Equity Scheme registration of interest to buy form.
2. Email the form to Capital.Team@act.gov.au

Contact us

For more information about buying your home, contact Capital.Team@act.gov.au.