The end of the first home owner bonus on December 31 has already hit residential house sales, according to Real Estate Industry of Western Australia’s Bunbury representative Roslyn Ierace.

“On the ground level you could see it straight away,” she said.

The first home owner bonus, which was part of the federal stimulus package, doubled the first home owners grant from $7000 to $14,000 for established homes and tripled it to $21,000 for newly built homes.

Mrs Ierace said first homebuyers were beginning to return to the market in December of last year, after dropping off when the bonus was halved in September.

First home owners must now make do with just the original grant of $7000 for both new and established homes.

However Mrs Ierace said property prices in Bunbury were secure.

Mrs Ierace said first homebuyers were a significant presence in the Bunbury real estate market because of the range of housing available.

"Bunbury is an ideal place for first home buyers, because we’ve got jobs, we’ve got the facilities and we have the affordable homes in the Greater Bunbury region," she said.

Mrs Ierace said a decline in first homebuyers will be balanced by an increase in investors entering the market, who usually purchase at the same price point.

"Investors have slowly come back into the market in the last few months, as they don’t have to compete with first home buyers," she said.

Housing Industry Australia’s Bunbury spokesperson David Lightfoot said while the bonus did have an appreciable impact on the local building industry, it was too soon to judge the impact of the end of the bonus on local builders.

However he said first homebuyers represented a quarter of the Bunbury building market before the stimulus package was introduced and should maintain that position.