What's that, the first home buyers grant doesn't do anything except subsidise the real estate/construction industries? I never would have guessed...

The Reserve Bank's deputy governor says the boosted first home owner grant may have pushed up house prices at the lower end of the market.

The Federal Government has in some cases tripled the value of the grant, in a bid to stimulate the housing market.

But the RBA's Ric Battellino has warned it could lose its incentive value.

"The benefits of that policy can get eroded very quickly by being capitalised into house prices," he said.

"From all accounts the bottom end of the housing market has picked up a lot in recent times, and it doesn't take long for the average house price to rise by $20,000 and leave the home buyers no better off than they were before."-- Source

The government never cared about homebuyers. If they did, they would have allowed the housing industry to suffer the necessary downturn making houses more affordable for low income families. That aside, since when was it a 'right' to own a house? In most cases renting is a far more economical, flexible way to go. The incentives behind home ownership are usually non-financial and instead psychological in nature (if we want to get more cynical -- the government loves it because it makes it that much harder for people to leave).

The first homebuyers grant was(is) nothing more than another prop-up for the real estate and construction unions along with various other interest groups. Good riddance.