Western Australia has named the 25 projects sharing its $75 million Regional Housing Support Fund. The successful applicant list shows where the work sits, who is holding the money, and how quickly it has to be delivered.
Western Australia has fully allocated its Regional Housing Support Fund, with 25 projects across eight regions sharing grants to deliver more than 900 homes and residential lots.
The announcement was made on 5 August 2026. The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage published the successful applicant list the same day.
That list is the part worth reading.
$74 million committed, 938 lots and dwellings
Adding the 25 individual grants in the published applicant list gives a committed total of $74,044,244 excluding GST. That leaves roughly $955,000 of the $75 million pool uncommitted.
Between them, the funded projects account for 938 dwellings and residential lots. That splits into 375 dwellings and 563 serviced lots.
Grants range from $582,379 for a 56 residence project in Carnarvon to three separate awards sitting at the $5 million ceiling. The average grant is just under $3 million. The median is $2.88 million.
The regional allocation, as announced:
| Region | Projects | Funding | Delivering |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wheatbelt | 6 | More than $20m | 64 homes |
| South West | 5 | More than $17.2m | 527 lots and 5 affordable rentals |
| Goldfields-Esperance | 3 | More than $10m | 118 homes and 36 lots |
| Kimberley | 3 | Nearly $7.1m | 28 key worker dwellings |
| Pilbara | 2 | More than $6.7m | 61 key worker dwellings |
| Great Southern | 2 | More than $6.6m | 23 social and affordable homes |
| Mid West | 3 | $5.3m | 20 community and key worker homes |
| Gascoyne | 1 | More than $580,000 | 56 key worker residences |
Local governments are the largest group of recipients
Thirteen of the 25 successful applicants are local governments. Their grants total about $38.6 million, which is 52 per cent of the committed funding.
Six grants went to private developers or landowners, worth $20 million in total. Four went to Aboriginal corporations, worth $8.9 million. Two went to community housing organisations, worth $6.6 million.
That mix is the most practical detail in the announcement, because it determines how each job reaches the market.
When a shire is the grant holder, the path to the job runs through council procurement. Depending on the value of the works, that can mean a public tender, a panel arrangement, or a quotation process, and it follows council reporting and approval timelines. It is a different route in than a developer’s preferred builder list, and it tends to move at a different speed.
Small shires bundled up to reach scale
Three of the funded applications are joint bids by multiple councils.
The largest is a $4.5 million grant covering 20 key worker dwellings across six Wheatbelt and Great Southern shires: Dumbleyung, Lake Grace, Wagin, West Arthur, Williams and Woodanilling. The dwellings sit across roughly a dozen addresses in six separate towns.
A $2.1 million Mid West grant covers 10 dwellings across Perenjori, Three Springs, Mingenew and Carnamah. A separate $2.1 million Wheatbelt grant covers six dwellings across Tammin and Cunderdin.
On their own, none of these would be a viable job. Four dwellings in a small Wheatbelt town rarely draws a competitive tender, because the cost of getting a crew and a supply chain to site swamps whatever margin is left in the build.
Bundled, they become a 20 dwelling program under a single funding agreement.
Regional councils are learning to aggregate demand, and this round rewarded it.
That is the structural point in this announcement. The scale problem in small town housing is not usually a lack of need. It is that the need arrives four dwellings at a time, in towns that are two hours apart.
Where the lot volume actually sits
The subdivision money is concentrated in two regions.
Four South West projects account for 527 serviced lots between them: Arbour Estate at Margaret River (221 lots, $4.64 million), a roundabout at Cowaramup (132 lots, $5 million), Amberwood at Yalyalup (112 lots, $2.88 million) and Abbey Fields at Abbey (62 lots, $3.46 million).
A single Goldfields-Esperance project, Flinders Estate Stage 3 at Bandy Creek, accounts for the remaining 36 lots on a $4.02 million grant.
The Cowaramup grant is the clearest illustration of what this fund actually does. The Shire of Augusta Margaret River received the full $5 million ceiling to build a roundabout at Bussell Highway and Roy Earl Drive. The money is not buying houses. It is buying the intersection that makes 132 lots developable.
What it costs to unlock a serviced lot
Grant value per lot varies sharply across the funded subdivisions.
- Arbour Estate, Margaret River: about $21,000 per lot
- Amberwood, Yalyalup: about $25,700 per lot
- Cowaramup, Shire of Augusta Margaret River: about $37,900 per lot
- Abbey Fields, Abbey: about $55,700 per lot
- Flinders Estate Stage 3, Bandy Creek: about $111,800 per lot
Those figures are grant value divided by lot yield. They are not total development cost. The fund only covers the identified feasibility gap, and grants are stated as a maximum value excluding GST, so actual drawdown may come in lower.
Read with that caveat, the spread is still a rough map of how quickly regional development economics come under strain once you move away from a market that can carry the servicing cost on its own.
The delivery clock is short
The fund guidelines set completion windows. Subdivision projects had to demonstrate delivery within two years. Construction projects had four.
Applications also had to show the project was already at the point where contractors could be engaged and construction could start. Proposals still at preliminary design or concept stage were explicitly flagged in the guidelines as unlikely to be competitive.
That combination compresses the runway. Every funded project had to demonstrate at application stage that it was ready to engage contractors, and all 25 now have money attached and a fixed end date. Procurement on most of them is a near term event rather than a next year event.
Funding agreements may also carry a retention condition. The guidelines note that successful applicants can be required to keep the dwellings available as key worker or community housing for a period of five to ten years.
How the pool tripled without a second round
The fund opened in October 2025 at $25 million, with applications closing on 19 December 2025.
It was tripled to $75 million in the 2026-27 State Budget, through matching $25 million contributions from the state and the Commonwealth. The federal share came through the 100,000 Homes for First Home Buyers program.
No second application round was run. The same pool of December applications was funded three times as deeply, which is why 25 projects were approved rather than the handful the original $25 million would have covered.
The fund also sits inside a much larger regional push. The same budget committed $692 million to regional housing, including the largest Government Regional Officer Housing program in the state’s history.
Running alongside it is a $49 million Housing Innovation Fund backing 15 local manufacturers to scale prefabrication and factory built components, which is aimed at the same delivery problem from the supply side.
The Good Builder Take
Most grant announcements are hard to act on. This one is not, because the applicant list is public and specific.
It names 25 projects with their addresses, their grant holders and their yields. For anyone working regional Western Australia, that is a list of funded jobs with a delivery deadline, sorted by region.
The concentration is the useful part. Just over half the funding sits with local governments, so much of this work will be procured through council processes rather than through a developer. The lot volume is almost entirely in the South West. The dwelling volume is scattered across small Wheatbelt, Mid West and Kimberley towns in packages of four to twenty.
Those are two very different businesses, and very few builders are set up to chase both.
Frequently asked questions
The Regional Housing Support Fund is a Western Australian Government grant program administered by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage. It provides grants to local governments, community housing providers, landowners and developers to close the feasibility gap on housing and land projects in regional WA, outside the Perth and Peel metropolitan region. Eligible costs include site preparation, water, wastewater, electricity and telecommunications connections, road construction and upgrades, and construction costs for key worker dwellings or community housing. Projects must involve at least three dwellings or three residential lots. The fund opened in October 2025 and applications closed in December 2025.
Twenty five projects were funded across eight regions. Adding the individual grants in the published successful applicant list gives a committed total of $74,044,244 excluding GST, against a $75 million pool. Those 25 projects account for 938 dwellings and residential lots in total, made up of 375 dwellings and 563 serviced lots. The government has described the outcome as supporting the delivery of more than 900 homes. Grants range from $582,379 to the $5 million ceiling, with three projects awarded the full $5 million.
The Wheatbelt received the largest share, with six applicants sharing more than $20 million to deliver 64 homes. The South West received more than $17.2 million across five applicants, delivering 527 residential lots and five affordable rentals. Goldfields-Esperance received more than $10 million across three applicants for 118 homes and 36 lots. The Kimberley, Pilbara, Great Southern, Mid West and Gascoyne received smaller allocations ranging from about $580,000 to just over $7 million.
Grants are available to local governments, community housing providers, and landowners or developers. In this round, 13 of the 25 grants went to local governments, six to private developers or landowners, four to Aboriginal corporations and two to community housing organisations. Mining and resource worker accommodation is not eligible, and neither is on site worker accommodation. Where an applicant proposes housing that is not explicitly key worker or community housing, the application has to demonstrate how the dwellings will be managed and retained for those purposes.
The fund guidelines require subdivision projects to be completed within two years and construction projects within four years. Applications also had to demonstrate the project was capable of timely delivery, meaning it was already at the stage where contractors could be engaged and construction could begin. Projects with longer completion timeframes were assessed as less competitive. Successful applicants may also be required, under their funding agreement, to retain the dwellings as key worker or community housing for a period of five to ten years.
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Disclaimer: This article is general information only. It does not take into account your particular circumstances and should not be relied on as a substitute for professional guidance. Totals and per lot figures in this article were calculated from the individual grant line items in the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage successful applicant list published August 2026. Grant values are stated as maximum funding values excluding GST and actual amounts drawn down may differ. Details of individual projects were current at the time of publication.
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