The first month of Canberra's new first-home buyer concession scheme saw a significant rise in the number of first-home buyer loans in the territory, according to figures released on Monday.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the number of first-home buyer loan commitments in July was 225 - an increase of 56 per cent on June.
First-home buyers represented 27.4 per cent of all loans in the territory, an increase of almost 5 per cent. Master Builder's ACT chief executive Michael Hopkins said the figures indicated the concession scheme had had an immediate impact.
"[The] figures illustrate that the ACT government's decision to remove stamp duty has had a positive immediate impact on the number of first-home buyers," he said.
"First-home buyers remain a vital driver within the Australian housing market and [the] figures show that lowering taxes in a targeted way can have positive social and economic impacts."
The first-home buyer lift could also be contributed to prices coming off their December-2018 peak, according to Domain research analyst Eliza Owen.
"There was a period where we saw prices had risen fairly consistently, so that may have discouraged first-home buyers [but] prices have come off their peak and that encourages more first-home buyers."
Canberra's new first-home buyer concession scheme came into effect on July 1. The new scheme saw stamp duty abolished on all properties for first-home buyers under an annual household income threshold of $160,000.
Previously, concessions for first-home buyers in the nation's capital applied to new builds only.
