Every suburb this paper covers is locked out of Boost to Buy right now

Saving a 20 per cent deposit while paying someone else’s mortgage in rent is the arithmetic that keeps most first home buyers exactly where they are. A Queensland government scheme cuts the deposit a buyer needs to 2 per cent. For almost every household reading this, the queue for it has already closed.

The Boost to Buy Queensland scheme is still open, though only to buyers outside South East Queensland. Queensland Treasury’s overview page, last updated on 3 July 2026, states plainly that “Unity Bank is currently only taking appointments for Boost to Buy places in regional Queensland”. South East Queensland has stopped accepting applications because all of its appointments have been allocated.

What the Boost to Buy Queensland scheme is worth

Treasury describes the scheme as providing “an equity contribution to eligible participants who are buying their first home in Queensland”. In practice, the state buys a share of the house alongside the buyer. A participant needs a minimum deposit of 2 per cent. The government then contributes equity of up to 30 per cent for a new home and up to 25 per cent for an existing home.

The property price cap is $1 million. Income caps run to $155,000 a year for a single person, and to $232,000 combined for a couple with or without dependents, or for a single applicant with dependents. Those thresholds are assessed on the 2026 taxable income year.

Set that against the way a first home normally gets bought. A 20 per cent deposit on a house near the price cap is years of saving for a household paying Brisbane rent at the same time, and those years are exactly when prices tend to move. A 2 per cent deposit is a different order of problem, which is why a scheme like this one matters more to renters than to anyone else.

Why the postcode now decides the answer

Applications run through Unity Bank, and the bank draws the boundary. Unity Bank’s own material states that South East Queensland bookings “will NOT be accepted”, and the bank counts Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan-Beaudesert, Moreton Bay, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast as South East Queensland.

Lay that boundary across the suburbs this masthead is read in and nothing sits outside it. Sunnybank, Runcorn, Calamvale, Kuraby, Eight Mile Plains and Coopers Plains are in Brisbane. Springfield Lakes, Redbank Plains and Goodna are in Ipswich. Woodridge, Marsden, Logan Central and Browns Plains are in Logan. North Lakes, Kallangur and Murrumba Downs are in Moreton Bay. Every one of them falls inside the closed zone.

Five hundred more places, and where they can be used

Round 2 of the scheme offers up to 500 additional places. Across its life the scheme is expected to support up to 2,000 first home buyers, with $330 million allocated to it. Those are serious numbers for a state program, and they are the fairest measure of how much weight the government has put behind the idea.

What Treasury does not publish is any commitment to a further South East Queensland allocation. The page records that regional Queensland is still accepting appointments and that South East Queensland is not. Nothing on it promises a reopening, a waiting list or a second draw for Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan or Moreton Bay. A buyer in Sunnybank who plans around a place opening up is planning around something no government page currently says.

A second closed door

The state also runs a concession on transfer duty for first home buyers, worth up to $24,525. It is a separate scheme with its own rules, and one of those rules has changed. For transactions entered into on or after 1 August 2026, the buyer must “be an Australian citizen, permanent resident or specified foreign retiree”.

For a household in Sunnybank or Springfield Lakes still working through a skilled visa, that is a second closed door. Where they want to buy rules them out of the equity scheme. The visa they currently hold rules them out of the duty concession. Neither rule was written with them in mind. Both of them land on the same kitchen table while the rent keeps going out.

What a Brisbane buyer should do this week

If the purchase can happen outside the six areas Unity Bank lists, appointments are still being taken and the published terms are unchanged. That is a real option for a family with portable work, or with relatives already settled in Toowoomba, Townsville or Cairns, and it is worth costing properly before it gets dismissed.

If the purchase has to happen in Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan or Moreton Bay, the sensible move is to keep the deposit plan running rather than pause it on the chance of a new allocation. Check the Treasury overview page directly, and note the date it was last updated, because a page like this one changes without an announcement. Anyone building a plan around the federal first home deposit guarantee should treat the two schemes as separate tests with separate paperwork.

If a duty concession is part of the plan, the 1 August 2026 date decides which version of the rules applies to a contract. The timing of a signature now carries a consequence it did not carry last year, and that is a conversation to have with a conveyancer before an offer goes in, rather than after.

What Treasury has not set out

Boost to Buy is administered through Queensland Treasury, and the portfolio belongs to David Janetzki, the Treasurer, Minister for Energy and Minister for Home Ownership. Home ownership is written into the title of his office, which puts a scheme like this one close to the centre of what the government says it is doing on housing. The $330 million allocated and the target of up to 2,000 first home buyers are the public measure of that commitment. What has not been set out is what comes next for the corner of the state where most Queenslanders actually live.

A 2 per cent deposit changes who gets to own a house rather than rent one, and for a family in Runcorn or Redbank Plains that is not an abstraction. The scheme exists, it is funded, and for now the remaining places are being taken up somewhere else.