First home buyers forward dating contract to get extra grant money By Ben Butler November 15, 2008 01:43am Email article
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Text size + - Cash grab ... some first home buyers are forward dating contracts to they get extra government grant money. Have your say! Comments are open on this article - add yours First home buyers fake contracts Dates changed to get extra grant money Some agents encourage them to do it
HOUSE buyers are allegedly faking contracts to illegally claim the boosted first-home grant.
Some dodgy real estate agents and mortgage brokers are encouraging the fraud, suggesting buyers change the date of existing contracts to fall after October 14 so they qualify for the latest lucrative federal government grants.
Forward-dating contracts could net first-home buyers $14,000 instead of $7000 under the old grant system.
A Herald Sun investigation has also discovered:
SOME financiers are reporting a 25 per cent surge in Victorian mortgage sales since the Government doubled the grant a month ago.
Related Coverage Trawling mortgagee sales for bargains NEWS.com.au, 16 Apr 2008 Home loan advertising blitz attacked NEWS.com.au, 20 Oct 2008 Buyers beware as housing market stalls NEWS.com.au, 27 Oct 2008 Home buyers unmoved by Budget NEWS.com.au, 19 May 2008 How did we get here? NEWS.com.au, 30 Sep 2008 INQUIRY rates on new and established homes jumped 80 per cent in the week after the new grant was announced.
HOUSE sales in some areas of country Victoria have leapt 300 per cent on the back of first-home buyers in rural areas being eligible for state and federal grants totalling $29,000 on new homes.
MORE than 1300 wrongly claimed first-home grants, worth almost $11 million, have been detected since the scheme began in 2000.
RORTERS have been fined $411,000 in the past year alone and ineligible applicants forced to pay back $3.7 million in the same period.
AMONG frauds detected by the State Revenue Office inspectors were greedy investors and owners of multiple properties.
ALMOST 300,000 Victorians have received $2.9 billion in first-home grants since 2000.
The new grants, coupled with low interest rates and falling prices, are luring potential first-home buyers.
But the influx of new money has sparked fears prices could spiral out of reach of ordinary Australians.
While industry figures remain cautious, early data shows sales rose in October on the back of the grant boost.
Australian Finance Group, which controls about 10 per cent of the national mortgage market, said a surge in first-home buyers saw Victorian mortgage sales soar by 25.1 per cent in October.
With house sales drying up as the global financial crisis hit home, developers had slowed building new homes.
Nick Collishaw, head of Mirvac, said some of its projects had been put on hold for three to six months. But a fortnight ago it sold 36 homes, mostly to first-home buyers, compared with 15 the week before.
The grant increase has sparked a sales boom in regional Victoria.
Villawood boss Rory Costelloe said sales at the company's Bendigo estates had skyrocketed 300 per cent.
