Essential workers in Victoria offered $35,000 discount to build their dream home

Victorian nurses, teachers, cops and firefighters are among the essential workers being offered a $35,000 discount to build their home dream.

Developer Villawood Properties is slashing the cost of a block of land in their estates for care workers in a bid to help connect them with housing in areas where their services are needed but where they struggle to afford a home.

Executive director Rory Costelloe said the $35,000 was a $15,000 extension to an existing offer his company had offered to care workers across the past six years, and a nod to their 35th year in business.

“We started with $20,000, and it wasn’t cutting the mustard now that prices have gone up,” he said.

“But you have to try and care for them if you are expecting them to care for you.”

The scheme is available at estates in Melbourne’s north, west and in Geelong.

So far it has already handed out $4.6m to 300 care workers around the state, with applicants means tested and required to live within about 11km of where they work.

In launching the expanded funds, Villawood noted Australia Bureau of Statistics data shows care workers are paid as much as $21,000 less than the average yearly wage.

Occupational therapist Beth Crosby is among those to use the Care Workers Support Program and said she had dreamt of a house for four years before doing so.

“I had tried to get in before that, when I was working five casual jobs, but it wasn’t seen as full-time by the banks,” she said.

(Beth Crosby took up the $20,000 discount offer on a block of land in a Villawood Properties estate that helped get her on the path to building a new home.)

Last week the nation’s biggest bank agreed to back buyers of off-the-plan apartments and townhouses with deposits as small as $10,000.

(300 care workers have already taken up the offer with Villawood Properties.)

Ref: Essential workers in Victoria offered $35,000 discount to build their dream home (realestate)

Photo Credit: realestate