Does Rentvesting Still Stack Up After the 2026–27 Budget?

What rentvesting trades away: the PPOR exemptions

Your principal place of residence is generally exempt from both land tax and capital gains tax. A rentvester rents that residence and owns no part of it, so the property they buy carries neither exemption. The eventual capital gain on the purchase is taxable, and land tax applies to it the way it applies to any investment holding — though land tax on an investment property is generally deductible, which softens the annual cost.

Stamp duty on the purchase works the same way for a rentvester as for any investor: it is a capital acquisition cost, not annually deductible, and is added to the CGT cost base for the eventual sale. None of this makes rentvesting a mistake — it simply means the purchase must earn its keep as an investment on its own terms, without the concessions a home enjoys.

The 2026–27 Budget changed the rentvesting maths

For properties purchased or contracted from 12 May 2026, rental losses are deductible against salary and other income only for new builds. Buy an established property after that date and the losses are quarantined — carried forward against future rental profits or the eventual capital gain, but not against your salary. Properties owned or contracted before 12 May 2026 are grandfathered under the old rules.

The CGT side shifts too. From 1 July 2027 the flat 50% discount is replaced by indexation-based treatment with an effective minimum of 30%; new builds retain concessional treatment and grandfathered holdings keep the old rules. For a rentvester the property's class — grandfathered, new build, or established post-budget — now determines both the gearing and the exit tax treatment, which is why Plintha classifies every property it analyses and changes the tax modelling accordingly.

Judging a rentvest purchase on yield and growth

Because a rentvested property never has to suit your own life, it can be held to a purely analytical standard. Plintha scores every property through two strategy lenses — Yield and Growth — and returns a verdict of Meets Criteria, Conditional or Below Criteria with a 0–100 score, so a purchase that leans on one lens while failing the other is visible immediately.

The modelling starts from stated, overridable defaults: 80% LVR, 6.5% p.a. interest on an interest-only loan over a 30-year term, property management at 8% of rent, a 3% vacancy allowance, and maintenance at 0.7% of the purchase price per year, with LMI added above 80% LVR. Every analysis is also stress-tested: interest rates 2% higher, an extended vacancy, and the interest-only period expiring into principal-and-interest — the point at which repayments jump. A rentvest purchase that only holds together under the sunny-day assumptions is precisely what that stress test exists to expose.

Buying interstate: stamp duty, land tax and buyer's agents

Rentvesting frequently means buying in a state you do not live in, which multiplies the ways to get the acquisition costs wrong. Plintha computes stamp duty exactly for all eight states and territories, verified against each revenue office, and runs land tax bracket maths exactly — estimating land value at roughly 60% of the price for a house where it is unknown, flagged [ESTIMATE] so you can see the assumption.

Buying sight-unseen also pushes many rentvesters toward a buyer's agent. Full-service agents commonly charge roughly $10,000–15,000 or a percentage of the price, and REBAA — the Real Estate Buyers Agents Association of Australia — is the industry body to know. Plintha's conflict check reads who pays whom on the deal and flags it, and a building and pest inspection — typically $400–800 — matters all the more on a property the buyer may never walk through. Every figure in the report carries provenance: computed, [ESTIMATE], or [ASSUMED] and overridable.

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