The Help to Buy scheme is expanding, and the market is watching.
The government program, which launched in December 2025, is intended to help 40,000 Australians enter the housing market over the next four years by way of a shared equity scheme.
On Monday, Teachers Mutual Bank Limited was added as a lender to the scheme, bringing the total number of lenders to three, alongside Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Bank Australia — two of which allow brokers to facilitate the applications. This gives both brokers and borrowers more options.
Now, as lender participation expands, industry players are watching closely to see how this will impact the housing market. So far, market sentiment is mixed.
Australian Broker asked brokers what the addition of another lender means in practical terms, whether greater lender choice will make a difference for borrowers, and if the scheme can help more Australians overcome the barriers to entering the property market.
Mortgage and finance specialist at Perth-based Calculated Lending
"I think it's great that borrowers now have a third lender to choose from under the Help to Buy Scheme. As brokers, providing choice is at the heart of what we do. A third lender broadens the policy options available and may help more borrowers qualify for the scheme.
As the scheme is already in place and limited to 10,000 places a year, I do not believe Teachers Mutual Bank joining will flood the markets available to eligible buyers. We welcome the additional competition, which may lead to better interest rates and loan terms."
Mortgage and finance broker at Brisbane-based 360 Mortgage Solutions
"Another lender will help reduce bottlenecks. But I think it's going to be more than that. Because at the moment, brokers can only give borrowers access to Bank Australia and their policy. So the fact that it's opened it up to Teachers Mutual is unreal. I didn't expect it. It means that there's a second lender with a second policy that brokers can access. It means that the clients now have a bit of an option rather than if they don't fit into Bank Australia's policy. There's nothing against Bank Australia. But it just means there's more than one policy. But it would also be great to have more lenders. There's less risk for them. I'm surprised that there's only a small uptake [of lenders].
As people start to hear more about the Help to Buy scheme and become more comfortable with the fact that it's not necessarily the government that owns the house, that there's pros and cons to it, they get it. As they learn more about it, then the uptake will be bigger. At the moment, a lot of people think, I'm not owning a home with the government; that's terrible. But if you've got the option to not get into the market at all, or get in with the assistance of the government, then it's worth it. It's a stepping stone. And I want to make sure that my clients are saving away enough funds that they can buy the government out of their 5% increment. So eventually they own the property that has their own name completely outright rather than having the government entwined in it for the entire loan and the entire time they own the property.
And I think also the fact that there's limited lenders on the broker panel or only one on the broker's panel at the moment means that a lot of brokers are hesitant. So they may not even be talking to their clients about it as an option. So there might be a lot of borrowers out there that are told,' sorry, you can't afford to buy. Thanks very much, see you later.' But that's because the brokers may be reluctant to even talk about the Help to Buy scheme because it is a little bit confusing."
Director and mortgage broker at Adelaide-based Rise High Financial Solutions
"The Help to Buy scheme has been pretty good so far. I think it's helping those that don't really have the borrowing capacity to do so. But the government is still investing in them and having an additional lender being able to come onto the panel to do it. I think that definitely helps as well. It just gives borrowers a bit more options. The main thing that helps is that every bank has different policies. Right now we're only limited to CBA and Bank Australia where sometimes the policies don't fit into the clients' circumstances.
But I wouldn't say that it's limited [in lenders] because generally people would try to avoid using the shared equity scheme if possible and there are definitely restrictions to it in terms of how much you can earn, how much you can retain in savings and all sorts of different things.
I think it's on the broker to explain and educate borrowers on how the Help to Buy scheme works. It's essentially being able to utilize the scheme to get into a better price, or a more desirable suburb where the property price may grow much more than if they were to just do it on their own. I think it's a net positive overall. It opens up avenues for buyers as an additional avenue, compared with all the other schemes that are available."
Founder, director and mortgage broker at Adelaide-based SA Wealth
"The scheme is just high in the sky sort of ideas; it's like fringe-type stuff. It's definitely not going to make a material difference to the housing market. Consumer sentiment completely rules out there, when it comes to your first-time investor or first-time homebuyer. Who wants to buy in a declining market and have negative equity? I mean that's the fundamentals of all of it. This talk about wanting to help people buy a home and reallocation of risk and capital stuff is just completely off base. It doesn't come to the core of the problem. And anyone in their right mind as a first-time homebuyer, or anyone who wants to buy a home, an occupier, would never want to buy at this moment considering where the environment's at and then having a position of possibly six or 12 months, 18 months of negative equity because there's a declining housing market and that was forced by government. So an announcement for a particular type of policy, or a lender to help is completely irrelevant. It just misses the bigger picture here of why someone would buy a home. Yes, it's to not obviously have to pay rent. But if the property is declining in value, what is the point?"
