FIRB Approval for Home Buyers: What You Can Buy, What It Costs, and the Ban Until 2029

What FIRB Is — the 30-Second Version

FIRB is the Foreign Investment Review Board, the body that advises the federal government on foreign investment into Australia. For a home buyer, the practical meaning is simple: if you are a foreign person, you need government approval before you buy Australian residential property. It is an application, with a fee, decided under the foreign investment framework — in most residential cases as a routine process rather than a judgement call.

FIRB isn’t a tax — it’s permission. The tax comes later, and it’s the state charging it.

That distinction trips up almost everyone. FIRB approval is a federal permission slip with an application fee attached. The genuinely large cost — foreign purchaser duty of 7–9% depending on the state (as at July 2026) — is a separate state charge that arrives at settlement whether or not FIRB approved you quickly. You can see what that surcharge means for your purchase with our foreign buyer duty calculator. This page deals with the permission; the calculator deals with the tax.

Most of what is written about FIRB is written by law firms for investors, or by the government for compliance. This guide is written for the person actually trying to buy a home: what needs approval, what the ban until 2029 really covers, what the fees look like, and how it all fits around a loan.

Who Needs Approval

Whether you need FIRB approval comes down to your residency status, not your passport stamp count. As at July 2026:

• Australian citizens — no. Citizens never need FIRB approval for residential property, even if they live overseas and have for years.
• Permanent residents — no. PRs are not foreign persons under the framework. If you hold PR, this page is mostly not about you — our visa home loan guide covers the lending questions that remain.
• New Zealand citizens ordinarily resident in Australia — no. NZ citizens living here on a Special Category Visa are generally treated like permanent residents for these purposes.
• Temporary residents — yes. Holders of temporary visas — skilled work visas, partner visas in progress, student visas — are foreign persons and need approval before buying, subject to what the ban permits (next section).
• Foreign non-residents — yes. People who live outside Australia and hold no PR need approval, and face the tightest limits on what they can buy.

One rule nobody tells couples: buying jointly with an exempt spouse can remove the need for approval entirely. A temporary resident purchasing with their Australian-citizen, PR or eligible NZ-citizen spouse or de facto partner, as joint tenants, generally does not need FIRB approval for that purchase. The exemption has precise wording — the joint-tenants requirement in particular — so check the current conditions against your circumstances rather than assuming. If this is you, our guide for mixed-visa couples buying property covers the structuring decisions that follow, and our visa buying eligibility checker gives you a quick read on where your visa stands.

The Ban: 1 April 2025 to 30 June 2029

Here is the wall. From 1 April 2025 until 30 June 2029, foreign persons — including temporary residents — are generally unable to buy established dwellings in Australia (as at July 2026). Before the ban, a temporary resident could get approval to buy one established home to live in; that pathway is paused for the duration of the window. If you are on a temporary visa and had your eye on an existing house or apartment, this is the rule that reshapes your plans.

The exceptions are narrow but real:

• Permanent residents — not foreign persons, not affected.
• NZ citizens ordinarily resident in Australia — treated comparably to PRs, not affected.
• Joint purchase with an exempt spouse — a temporary resident buying an established home jointly with a citizen, PR or eligible NZ-citizen partner as joint tenants can generally still proceed. For most couples this is the pathway that matters, and the structuring around it is covered in our mixed-visa couples guide.
• Limited housing-supply carve-outs — for example, purchases involving significant redevelopment that genuinely increases the housing stock. These are assessed case-by-case and are rare in ordinary home buying.

The ban is a policy with an end date, not a permanent feature — but until 30 June 2029 it is the operating reality, and any plan that ignores it is a plan that fails at contract review.

What You CAN Get Approved For

The framework is built to push foreign purchases towards adding housing stock, so the approvable categories all involve something new:

• New dwellings.A home that has not previously been sold as a dwelling and has not been previously occupied (or, in a development, occupied only briefly under the rules). Approval for new dwellings is generally granted without conditions on the buyer’s use.
• Off-the-plan purchases. Apartments and townhouses bought before or during construction count as new dwellings. Some developments hold an exemption certificate that covers foreign buyers, which can simplify your side of the paperwork — ask the developer, then verify.
• Vacant land. Approvable with conditions — typically that you complete construction of a dwelling within a set timeframe (commonly four years) and provide evidence of completion. The condition is enforceable, so treat the build timeline as a legal obligation, not an aspiration.

For a temporary resident planning to stay long term, the practical reading is: buy new or build, or buy established jointly with an exempt spouse, or wait for PR. Those are the pathways; everything else is noise.

What It Costs

FIRB application fees scale with the purchase price. The figures below are indicative only — a budgeting guide for new dwellings and vacant land, not a quote:

Indicative figures only. FIRB application fees are indexed every 1 July — confirm the current amount with the official FIRB/ATO fee estimator at firb.gov.au before budgeting or applying. Different (much higher) fee scales apply to established dwellings where a purchase is permitted.

Two budgeting notes. First, the fee is payable per application and is generally not refunded if you are refused or you walk away — apply for the property you are actually buying. Second, the FIRB fee is the small number: on a $750,000 new build, the fee tier is around $15,100 (indicative, as at July 2026), while the state foreign purchaser surcharge on the same purchase can run several times that. Run both through the foreign buyer duty calculator before you commit to a price bracket.

Process and Timing

The sequence matters more than the paperwork. The pathway that works:

1. Apply before you sign — or sign a contract that is expressly subject to FIRB approval. Applications are lodged online through the ATO, which administers residential applications; you pay the fee, and the decision clock starts from payment.
2. Allow for the 30-day window.The standard statutory decision period is 30 days, and the government can extend it. Most straightforward residential applications resolve within the window, but “most” is not a settlement plan — build the buffer into your finance and settlement dates.
3. Match the approval to the property.Approval is property-specific (or given via a developer’s exemption certificate for a specific development). If you switch targets, you apply again.

Auctions are the trap.An auction contract is unconditional the moment the hammer falls — no cooling-off period, no subject-to-FIRB clause. If you need approval, you need it before auction day, covering that property. There is no version of “sort it out after” that works at auction.

What Happens If You Skip It

How FIRB Interacts With Your Home Loan

FIRB approval and finance approval are two separate races you have to win at the same time, and they interact more than most buyers expect.

Lenders want FIRB evidence before unconditional. A lender advancing money against a property that the borrower is not legally permitted to buy has a security problem, so credit teams typically require the FIRB approval (or evidence the purchase is exempt) before finance goes unconditional — some want it earlier in assessment. Turning up at finance-approval stage without it stalls the file.

Sequencing is the skill. The clean order for a temporary resident: confirm what you can buy and your borrowing capacity first, sign subject to both finance and FIRB (never possible at auction — see above), lodge the FIRB application immediately, and run the finance approval in parallel so both conditions clear inside the contract timeframes. Lender policy for visa holders varies enormously — which visas are accepted, at what loan-to-value ratio, and with what conditions — and that variation is the subject of our visa home loan guide, with visa-specific detail for 491 visa holders and 482 visa holders.

This coordination — FIRB timing, contract conditions, lender selection, settlement dates — is exactly the work a broker does on these purchases. We run the lending side and the sequencing; the FIRB application itself and the contract conditions sit with you and your solicitor.

Where to From Here

If you are on a temporary visa and planning to buy: confirm your category above, check your visa’s lending position with our eligibility checker, price the real cost with the foreign buyer duty calculator, and if you are buying with an Australian partner, read the mixed-visa couples guide before you decide whose names go where.

Title, duty and FIRB structuring have legal and tax consequences — we work alongside your solicitor and accountant, and nothing here is legal advice. For the lending side — what you can borrow on your visa, which lenders fit, and how to sequence FIRB with finance — get a free assessment or call 1300 088 065.

Information as at July 2026. Lender and government policies change without notice and are assessed case-by-case. This is general information, not credit or legal advice.