Browse Forums Home Finance Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 21Oct 19, 2009 3:09 pm Thanx for that info Kylie.Paul! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey dollar, my 1st progress payment has already been made by bank to my builder but the FHOG money hasn't yet been received! We are using some of it towards our construction but the rest comes to us. I think we'l be in the same situation as Kylie.Paul. So im assuming it works this way across the board! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just received my letter today saying that we are eligible to receive the grant. It only mentions the $12k though and that's because they still haven't reviewed my request to extend our commencing construction time. Thanks to my very laid back & lazy broker I have only just sent in the required documents for the extension to the SRO. I had everything that they needed prepared over a month ago but the broker said he would handle it & infact he has the contacts with in the bank because we dealt with him not the bank. So, not that I was at all confident in him but I left it up to him to send everything through & then i get this call last Wednesday telling me that for privacy reasons he cannot do anything & that I'd better call the SRO asap & arrange something. So like a mad woman I rushed down to the post office to get all certified copies of our building contract, Land contract & letter from the developer acknowledging that there was a delay beyond our control in the subdivision being complete. I expressed posted it to the SRO. I have rang today and they still haven't received or processed it! Aaaarrrrgh! No one can tell you whether you have a good case as its all assessed on a case by case basis. So who knows! I just hope its approved! $14000 is a lot of money to miss out on! Has anyone had this experience & been approved or declined for the extension? Building: Santorini 26 with M*tricon Where:VIC Site Cut 29/09/09 Slab Complete 09/10/09 Frame Complete 22/10/09 LockUp Complete 17/11/09 Fixing Complete 03/12/09 **My Thread:[/i] viewtopic.php?f=31&t=23110 Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 22Oct 20, 2009 3:43 pm Shelz, it's so confusing this FHOG thing. As long as you get it is the main thing. Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 23Oct 20, 2009 5:05 pm I may be wading a day late here but.. Here goes. The Office of State Revenue will look to place the First Home Owners Grant as per the bank accounts on the application forms (Queensland Fhog forms are very clear about account for disbursement etc). Fhog disbursement is pretty much well uniform across a LOT of banks and is done once slab is down. Some do it automatically. Some need a request etc. There are a few lenders that will advance the Fhog to the client or builder or whereever directed at settlement of the land. Fhog can be received by the customer and used for anything. Although the premise behind the funds are to reduce the costs of first home buyers allowing them into the market. There are no rules about the use of the funds. Furniture, construction, landscaping, new car, personal debts, investing.. the list goes on. Chickad- it depends on the bank you are with whether you need to pay for the LMI or not. It also depends on the LVR you are at as well. In the case of a land and construction loan as one. The lmi will be charged at settlement. In the form of a capitalised fee or with the funds you provide as a deposit etc. In the case whereby you purchase your land up front and it does not encompass the full construction portion for value then depending on the loan to value ratio then you may pay an LMI premium at the land settlement. And then later on when you do you construction lending you will pay a 'gapping' LMI premium in order to insure the increased amount that needs to be covered. If the Fhog is your only at least your main source of deposit towards the project then the funds will be dispersed as part of the land and construction payments and you wont get it into your account. In the case where the Fhog has been sent to the builders and they are holding it. Check how much they received on the slab draw down compared to the schedule they provided you. If they only received the amount that the schedule dictated you may need to chase the bank for the Fhog OR the Fhog was factored in as part of the initial slab payment. If they did receive the Fhog payment over and above the First Scheduled payment. I would be getting those funds dispersed to you and holding them in your own account. Its easier to make the extra payment later on if you have to make a variation than it is to try and get that extra payment back from the builder if they just decide to take it out anyway. Those funds could be earning you good money in a high interest saver or a term deposit or with some lenders an offset account. Considering most building contracts have a built in 3% overun just in case costs go up part way through the build there is usually enough buffer to cover most if not all small variations right the way through a build. So there is no real need for them to keep this amount 'just in case'. I see this fairly regularly with our Owner Builder Lending System whereby the Owner Build contracts comeback 20-30% less than a fixed price contract. And these have been put together by builders themselves without corner cutting etc. Just no fat built into it for no reason. If anyone has any specific questions about particular lenders etc feel free to flick me a private message. There are so many questions in this thread to answer all in one go . Happy to help out. Regards, Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 24Oct 22, 2009 12:44 pm Hi Trent, Thanks for all that info It can all be so confusing! The SRO has received our request for extension and are reviewing it over the next few days, so fingers crossed! My next challenge is to get it off the the builder or bank (who ever ends up with it) before house settlement. I dont see why they should hold onto it & earn interest on it for the next 6months or so! Building: Santorini 26 with M*tricon Where:VIC Site Cut 29/09/09 Slab Complete 09/10/09 Frame Complete 22/10/09 LockUp Complete 17/11/09 Fixing Complete 03/12/09 **My Thread:[/i] viewtopic.php?f=31&t=23110 Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 25Nov 08, 2009 1:43 am We made our first progress payment last week and the same day the FHOG was paid onto our construction loan by the bank which our broker told us will be available as redraw once the house settles. Happy with this because it keeps my interest down and also i won't spend it and we will then only take what we need and the rest can sit there for emergencies Building Sandhurst 36 Porter Davis Currently Fixing Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 26Nov 08, 2009 7:49 pm Good to hear it all worked out well for you chickad23 Mines all sorted as well! We were approved for the extension and have received the full $26k that we were entitled to Although it was a bit of a headache with the "Hopeless" broker making out that we couldn't have it and that he had to move mountains to get earlier than at the final house settlement! When it turns out that it had absolutely nothing to do with the broker or the builder!!! As i wasn't happy with the way my broker was going about it I chose to ring and query the bank and lo and behold it had nothing to do with the broker anyway, he could do nothing about it as it was between the bank and myself! All I had to do was send a signed fax to the bank requesting the remaining moneys be transferred into my account and it was done within 48hrs! So now I have paid that annoying little personal loan off and everyones happy Building: Santorini 26 with M*tricon Where:VIC Site Cut 29/09/09 Slab Complete 09/10/09 Frame Complete 22/10/09 LockUp Complete 17/11/09 Fixing Complete 03/12/09 **My Thread:[/i] viewtopic.php?f=31&t=23110 Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 28Nov 10, 2009 6:11 pm If the 1st construction stage is less than the FHOG can the bank still make the 1st construction stage payment with the FHOG? I was under the impression that we were going to get the FHOG to pay for the first construction stage so therefore we would not be paying any interest etc until we actually use the lending money. Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 29Nov 10, 2009 8:50 pm Mine was paid at the frame stage so it reduced the draw down on the frame payment. The bank can only apply for the FHOG after base is complete. Mine took about 3 weeks after the slab was down before it came through. I hope that makes sense! I can only speak on my own experience though, not sure if its the same for everyone Building: Santorini 26 with M*tricon Where:VIC Site Cut 29/09/09 Slab Complete 09/10/09 Frame Complete 22/10/09 LockUp Complete 17/11/09 Fixing Complete 03/12/09 **My Thread:[/i] viewtopic.php?f=31&t=23110 Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 30Nov 10, 2009 9:46 pm Congrats Shelz to see you got $26K! Our FHOG will be paid on the next stage as it's more than the FHOG amount. Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 31Dec 09, 2009 6:33 pm Hi guys, Just thought I'd put in a post and see if anyone can help me with this. Our land was due to be titled in Feb 2010, to quallify us for the $32k HomeOwner grant, but as developers will be developers, they have now pushed back the titling of our land until March 2010 (which is what the are estimating. Knowing my luck it will be longer than that! ) Just wondering how we go about applying for an extension on the grant? We have signed our HIA contracts with Carlisle homes in September to secure the grant but now with this setback on the land, I am very concerned that I could lose upto $7k! Does anyone know what the situation is with this and what I should do? Any help would be appreciated. Site Start - 20th July 2010 Slab Pour - 30th July 2010 Frame Start - 6th August 2010 Roof Tiles - 18th August 2010 Plaster Completed - 6th September 2010 Bricks - 3rd - 20th September 2010 Painting - 4th October 2010 Fitoff Begins - 21st October 2010 Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 32Dec 10, 2009 9:43 am Hey Sanmark1, It is best for you to contact your state revenue office. The fhog in most states however is reflective of the construction contract date AND the land contract date. If these are both within the dates for the amount of FHOG you are after then these should still be fine. The extension that was being discussed in this topic was because construction would not start within the required time frames of the constrcution contract date. Your State Revenue office will be able to confirm the required timeframe for you. If the titling and thus the start of construction is going to be outside of this period. Then you will need to apply for an extension. Much the same situation as the other posts on this thread. Titling is out of your hands, therefore you should be able to apply for an extension and still receive the full fhog. Regards, Trent Davidson Property Finance Consultant Residential Lending LJ Hooker Finance Brisbane North Credit Representative Number: 387283 under Australian Credit Licence:380270 Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 33Dec 10, 2009 11:40 am Ours was given on the 2nd stage of construction and we even got a copy of the cheque invoice for our records. Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 34Dec 15, 2009 8:31 am Well i'm sort of in the same boat but not quote. I got a letter in the beginning of December saying that SRO had approved my grant blah blah blah and i dance a little inside. Though the letter in the mail came together with my frame stage invoice so it wasn't a very long dance, but that's another story. Since i applied through ANZ i wanted it to get paid to my normal account not my mortgage account. I was thinking of (in the hope of the Christmas sales) to buy myself some light fittings for the house etc building stuff. It's now mid December and the bank had not transfered the grant to my account. I'm getting slightly annoyed because imagine if you calculate the interest of $36500 with approx 4% interest p.a (my bank account interest), in a daily basis i'm not getting $4.00 The fact that it has been over 10 days where they say they're still processing it means thats $40.00 of interest i'm not getting. I should be sending a bill to the bank from the Bank of Novotel. Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 36Dec 15, 2009 3:29 pm actually not quite hehe. I already have my deposit to pay for my frame stage etc available from my own fund that i will directly pay to the builder. The FHOG was really going to be used to buy miscleanous items around the house since its great time to do so right now with christmas sale coming up, which since we all know cost an arm and five pair of legs... even when you budget. The bank did pay for the slab stage and process my FHOG etc up to approval letter, moving along up to when the branch i dealt with told me that they're in the process of transfering the money from SRO to my account and said that it should take only a DAY OR TWO. (LIAR) I don't have the option for offset account because my loan doesn't have that. Had i been in your situation Sheepdog, i would completely understand your annoyance. I don't think my bank told me to instruct paying FHOG only to house stages... i thought you could use the FHOG for anything you want... The sensible option is probably to help pay things for your first house (at least for me). Are you sure they only give you the FHOG if you want to pay your invoice? That seems wrong... unless if you said in the beginning when you apply for the loan that you were going to use the FHOG as part of your deposit. The only thing the bank screwed up is taking that long to get the money to mewhich as i checked an hour ago in my internet banking still haven't gone in yet. Though when i speak to this nice person at the branch she said it will be in a couple of days. I'll try again tomorrow and see, but i suspect the hold up is really from the main mortgage loan center wherever in melbourne. Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 37Dec 15, 2009 5:52 pm Hi Guys, With us they the bank used the funds to pay our frame stage payment but that meant that we had a credit on our loan. So for instance they paid our builder the full amount for that stage eg) $40k but only drew down a few thousand off the actual mortagage. We could have left the funds on the mortgage which would have meant that we owed $17k less (we only qualified for $26k and used $9k as part of our deposit - hence $17k remainder). After arguing with our idiot broker that told us that we couldnt access the funds, i chose to ring the bank directly and was advised to fax through a letter with both mine and hubbies signatures requesting the remaining funds be deposited into the account of our choice. And it was done within 48hours! Now this is important - (because bank folk are quite simple) You must give a detailed breakdown of the figures and show the exact amount that will be left over and that you want it deposited. Eg) The builder is owed $200 & the Loan has $220k left to draw on, which means we are in credit $20k please forward to my nominated account! This is what we did and as I said we had the funds no questions asked within 48hours. Im not sure if all banks operate the same but we are through CBA. Good luck with it and have fun spending it at the Chrissy sales Building: Santorini 26 with M*tricon Where:VIC Site Cut 29/09/09 Slab Complete 09/10/09 Frame Complete 22/10/09 LockUp Complete 17/11/09 Fixing Complete 03/12/09 **My Thread:[/i] viewtopic.php?f=31&t=23110 Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 38Dec 15, 2009 11:43 pm 48 hours! I am impresseeddd! WOW.... i gave this similar instruction to them about making sure said fund goes to my account so i can spend it but so far.... 10+1 days later, no luck. It didn't even have anything to do with my deposits monies for the built. Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 39Dec 16, 2009 10:53 am I'm now in the same predicament, the bank stuffed up and the FHOG has been outstanding for more than a month!! I've filed a letter of demand with the bank, asking for full restitution of all debit interest associated with the FHOG amount and a full refund of application fee (my logic being if they've stuffed up the loan process they shouldnt be due any fees). now awaiting for the goons to revert, failing which ombudsman here i come. Sheepdog novotel Well i'm sort of in the same boat but not quote. I got a letter in the beginning of December saying that SRO had approved my grant blah blah blah and i dance a little inside. Though the letter in the mail came together with my frame stage invoice so it wasn't a very long dance, but that's another story. Since i applied through ANZ i wanted it to get paid to my normal account not my mortgage account. I was thinking of (in the hope of the Christmas sales) to buy myself some light fittings for the house etc building stuff. It's now mid December and the bank had not transfered the grant to my account. I'm getting slightly annoyed because imagine if you calculate the interest of $36500 with approx 4% interest p.a (my bank account interest), in a daily basis i'm not getting $4.00 The fact that it has been over 10 days where they say they're still processing it means thats $40.00 of interest i'm not getting. I should be sending a bill to the bank from the Bank of Novotel. I've had something similar happen. From what I understand you must instruct the bank to use the FHOG funds to pay the invoice. The bank informed me that the FHOG must be accompanied with an invoice payment but your mileage may vary because bank lending managers often don't know the products as well as they should. I was instructed to write "Pay with FHOG funds" on my invoice along with the usual "I am satisfied with completed works" blah blah. You should then get the remainder in one of your accounts. Now this is the important thing - if you believe you should have already received the FHOG (the approval letter doesn't mean it should accompany payment), it is quite possible that the bank screwed up. In my case, the payment was supposed to be made at slab stage but it didn't go through properly and I was forced to wait till the next invoice - to which I flipped my lid. After not getting anywhere with my lending manager I went to the branch manager and discussed compensation because if they had organised payment on time, the money would of been sitting in one of my offset accounts instead of accruing interest. They've claimed fault and agreed to reimburse me the interest I would have paid on that money had it been done correctly. Don't use your savings account to work out the reimbursement total, tell them that you would have put it in an offset account or an early repayment because you pay them a lot more in interest through your loan than you get through a savings account (i.e. ~4% savings vs ~6% interest over 30 years). Remember to remind them of 'customer service', branch managers consider it a big deal, especially with all the bad press they're getting due to rate rises and margin fattening. Re: When do we receive our First Home Owners Grant? 40Feb 22, 2010 2:34 pm I would be interested to know the outcome nietzche. So it looks like we finally have some movement on site! Definitely later than expected, but I'll take any progress at this point. I'll drop by over the weekend to get… 5 27733 We already paid for somfy motors for the blinds. 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