Does FIRB Apply to Me? A Breakdown by Visa & Residency Status
Permanent residents, New Zealand citizens, buying with an Australian spouse, and temporary visa holders all sit under genuinely different rules — not one 'foreign person' bucket.
General information, not advice. Foreign investment rules, duties and taxes change and depend on your personal circumstances (visa status, entity structure, property type). Always confirm current requirements with FIRB, RevenueWA, and a licensed conveyancer, migration agent, or tax adviser before acting.
Our main FIRB guide covers the “foreign person” test and the established dwelling ban in general terms. This guide answers the question most people actually have: does this apply to me, specifically, given my visa or relationship status? The honest answer is that a few categories of buyer face meaningfully different rules — including some who don’t need FIRB approval at all.
The legal test, briefly
You’re treated as “ordinarily resident” in Australia — and therefore not a foreign person — if you’re an Australian citizen, or a permanent resident who has actually been in Australia for 200 days or more in the 12 months before you buy. Everyone else is generally a foreign person for FIRB purposes. Everything below is a variation on this one test.
Australian citizens
Not a foreign person, full stop. FIRB doesn’t come into it, and none of this site’s duty surcharge or vacancy fee content applies to you.
Permanent residents — with a timing trap
Once you’ve held permanent residency and actually spent 200+ days in Australia in the preceding 12 months, you’re treated the same as a citizen: no FIRB approval, no FIRB fee, no state foreign buyer duty surcharge, and established dwellings are back on the table.
The trap: a recent PR grant doesn’t automatically clear you. If you’ve only just become a permanent resident, or you’ve spent significant time overseas, you may not have accumulated 200 days yet — which means you could still be a foreign person under the strict legal test even though your visa status feels settled. If your residency history is anything but straightforward, get this confirmed before you rely on the PR exemption.
New Zealand citizens — a genuinely different, more generous rule
New Zealand citizens are automatically granted a Special Category Visa (subclass 444) on arrival in Australia. SCV holders are generally not required to get FIRB approval to buy residential property — and unlike the permanent resident test, this exemption doesn’t depend on a 200-day residency count or on whether you’re currently living in Australia at all.
Two caveats worth knowing:
- This exemption covers residential property. Rural and commercial property still require FIRB approval for SCV holders, the same as any other foreign person.
- Whether WA’s 7% foreign buyers duty surcharge also exempts SCV holders is a state-duty question, separate from the federal FIRB exemption, and we haven’t been able to confirm WA’s specific treatment here with confidence — check directly with RevenueWA before assuming it doesn’t apply to you.
Buying with an Australian citizen, permanent resident, or NZ citizen spouse
This is the exemption most people miss. If you’re buying as joint tenants with a spouse or de facto partner (same-sex or different-sex relationships both qualify) who is an Australian citizen, an Australian permanent resident, or a New Zealand citizen eligible for the Special Category Visa, you generally don’t need FIRB approval — even if you personally would otherwise be a foreign person.
This matters more than it might sound like, because it’s one of the few paths that can open up an established dwelling, despite the general ban covered in our FIRB guide. It doesn’t apply to:
- Tenants in common ownership — the exemption specifically requires joint tenancy, a different legal ownership structure with different consequences (equal undivided interest and right of survivorship, rather than distinct, separately-held shares)
- Other relationships — parent/child, siblings, friends, or business partners don’t qualify, only a genuine spousal or de facto relationship
- Investment properties — this exemption is generally understood to apply to property you’ll live in, not one you’re buying purely as an investment
If this applies to your situation, the ownership structure needs to be right in the contract from the start — raise it with your settlement agent or solicitor before you make an offer, not after, since joint tenancy vs. tenants in common is a decision made at the point of purchase.
Temporary visa holders (the main “foreign person” category)
Student visas, skilled/employer-sponsored visas, graduate visas, bridging visas, and most other temporary visas: you’re a foreign person, the established dwelling ban applies to you, and the process in our main FIRB guide is the one to follow. This is the largest single group of foreign buyers, and everything else on this site is written primarily with this group in mind.
Non-resident foreign persons (no Australian visa)
If you don’t hold an Australian visa at all and are buying from overseas, you’re a foreign person under the most restrictive version of the rules — new dwellings, off-the-plan, or vacant land you commit to building on, per our FIRB guide.
A narrow exemption you’ll rarely rely on personally
Foreign-controlled companies that employ workers through the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme and are required to house them have a specific exemption to buy established dwellings for that purpose. This is a corporate/employer exemption, not something an individual PALM worker uses to buy their own home — included here for completeness, not because it’s likely to apply to you directly.
The bottom line
These are genuinely different legal tests, not shades of the same rule, and getting your own category wrong — either assuming you’re exempt when you’re not, or assuming you need approval when you don’t — has real consequences either way. If your situation doesn’t cleanly match one category above (mixed residency history, a recent visa change, a relationship status that’s evolving), get your specific status confirmed in writing before you make an offer, rather than relying on a general guide like this one.