Dale Paddle, of Cavalier Homes, said the federal government incentive, part of the economic response to the coronavirus pandemic, had already made a difference to the Albury-Wodonga industry.

"The demand's been levels that we haven't really seen for a long time, which is really good," he said.

"So it's certainly going to help keep a lot of people employed in our region.

"Our numbers through our displays are probably up eight to 10 times normal traffic over the last two weeks.

"Display home openings have gone from five groups to 38 groups last week since the grant was announced."

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Border couple Jade Willis and Nick Wenman said the grant encouraged them to resume plans to build their dream home on their Barnawartha block.

"We were all set to go pre-coronavirus, ready to sign contracts," Ms Willis said.

"It all started going pear-shaped, so we sort of hit the panic button just in case either my husband or I, or both of us, lost our jobs."

Thankfully that didn't happen and the grant announcement helped convince them to try again.

"That's one of the main reasons why we thought, yes, we'll get this thing going again because it's just going to make everything a bit easier," Ms Willis said.

"I'm hoping by this time next year we'll have our new house."

Master Builders Victoria said so far there had been 7544 HomeBuilder registrations in Victoria and 5192 in NSW.

May statistics showed both states' unemployment rates were about 2 per cent higher than the same month last year while Australia's rate was 7.1 per cent, up from 5.2 per cent in May 2019.

Mr Paddle, who is also president of the Master Builders Murray division, said several Cavalier projects were put on hold when the pandemic hit, but the situation was now more positive.

"We're not out of the woods yet, but the spike in interest does give us more confidence to keep looking at new projects, keep people in the region employed and hopefully play our part in the recovery of the local economy," he said

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