National Housing Infrastructure Facility (NHIF)

The National Housing Infrastructure Facility (NHIF) is a $1 billion facility that provides financing for:

1. Eligible housing enabling critical infrastructure projects that will unlock new housing supply, particularly social and affordable housing
2. From 23 November 2022, new social or affordable housing. 

The NHIF offers concessional loans, grants and, in certain limited cases for housing enabling infrastructure projects, equity finance to help support critical housing-enabling infrastructure.

To be eligible for financing, an applicant must demonstrate that without NHFIC financing, the project would be unlikely to proceed, likely to proceed only at a much later date, or with a lesser impact on new social or affordable housing. 

As part of the Federal Government’s budget commitments, the remit of the National Housing Infrastructure Facility (NHIF) has been widened, making up to $575 million available to invest in new social and affordable housing projects in addition to financing housing-enabling infrastructure.

The information on this page provides further details about NHIF Finance for housing enabling critical infrastructure (NHIF CI) and how to apply.

Further details about the broadening of the NHIF for social and affordable housing (NHIF SAH) will be available in December 2022.

The terms of NHIF finance are flexible with a range of concessions available to suit the applicant’s project requirements. These may include, for example, concessional interest rates, and/or longer loan tenure or extended period of capitalised interest.

Where the application is for a grant, NHFIC will give priority to proposals that also seek other forms of NHFIC finance as part of a blended financing arrangement.