A number of buyers including 22-year-old first home buyer Jesse White camped out overnight to ensure they got a slice of of the 94-hectare residential community located 10km from Geelong CBD.

"I was graduating from Flight Centre that day but I knew I had to get home as soon as I could because I got a text message at 4pm telling me that the first campers had arrived," said Mr White. "So I skipped celebrating my graduation, took the first train home to Geelong and went to the site in my uniform and got my place in queue.

"There’s a lot of demand for reasonably priced land in a good location such as this so I was willing to camp out so I wouldn’t miss out.

"It’s tough being a first home buyer but I’m rapt with my $213,000 purchase for a 263 square metre block. I have even picked up a second job to make sure I can build a house once the land title is sorted out."

First home buyers have camped out overnight to secure affordable land at new masterplanned community Halcyon Armstrong Creek in Geelong, Victoria.

A similar robust demand was also reported by Stockland during their recent land release in Elara, located within Marsden Park, 49 kilometres north-west of the Sydney CBD.

"We'd seen a couple of camp outs when we released a few 250 square metre blocks in Elara," said Andrew Whitton, chief executive officer of Stockland Communities.

"There's only so many small lots you can deliver within this community and at price points below $600,000 for a house and land package so we always get very strong demand from first home buyers for this product."


Frasers Property said it had seen a surge in first home buyer interest in its Sydney projects particularly for properties below $700000, the threshold for the federal government's first home buyer scheme for Sydney.

"We're seeing a much higher level of first time buyers now than we did in 2017 when the market was at its peak," said Nigel Edgar, General Manager of of Residential Development in NSW for Frasers Property.

"Two years ago, first home buyers accounted for about 15 per cent of our sales, now they make up between 35 and 45 per cent of our sales."

Metricon Homes NSW General Manager Luke Fryer noted that first home buyer activity has also been steadily picking up in their south-west and north-west Sydney projects since after the federal election.

Capital Bluestone's Woolooware Bay project has received strong interest from buyers according to the developer.

"We've seen a 25 per cent increase in sales to first home buyers from June through to September," he said.

Apartment boom

It's not just home and land packages that are in high demand. Luke Barbuto of Highland Property Group who is working on Capital Bluestone's Woolooware Bay project in Sutherland Shire said first home buyers are also now targeting off-the-plan apartments.


"We're seeing a huge amount of enquiries coming through our Woolooware Bay project which we’re expecting to translate into sales once the Federal First Home Loan Deposit Scheme is implemented in January 2020," he said.

In South Melbourne, developer Virgate notched up 78 off-the-plan sales following the grand opening weekend at its Domain House project on the site of the former studios of radio station 3AW.

That equated to 45 per cent of the 170 apartments in the $120 million development selling within seven days.

Prices for one bedroom apartments started at $460,000, well within the budget of first home buyers with the added appeal of being close to the Royal Botanic Gardens and future Anzac metro station.

“The Domain Precinct is a tightly held and sought-after area, we are seeing a huge uplift in demand for high-end apartments in South Melbourne," CBRE's managing director of residential projects Andrew Leoncelli said.

In another sign of the market's resurgence, Melbourne land developer Wolfdene recently lifted lot prices across its residential estates between $5,000 and $10,000 in response to rising demand.

The private developer reported a 40 per cent surge in average weekly sales since September compared with the first eight months of the year.


Cause for doubt?

Despite these anecdotal up-ticks in first home buyer activity, managing director of BIS Oxford Economics Robert Mellor said he wasn't convinced this will lead to a first home buyer boom.

"It's certainly back to healthier levels compared to when the Sydney and Melbourne markets were booming two years ago," he said.

"First home buyers were really left on the sidelines by the surge in investor demand because they were competing for similar properties to what the majority of investors buy.

"We're seeing some recovery, but we haven't seen that much price movement in the lower end of the market, which tells me there's no first home buyer boom."

Mr Mellor noted in the case of Sydney, only a very small proportion of first time buyers are buying new dwellings.

"Very few home buyers purchase off-the-plan and the proportion of those buying land and building is pretty small. I would expect only 10 per cent of Sydney first home buyers will do so. I think first time buyers in Sydney are less inclined to buy on the fringe as well."