Buying Property in an SMSF After the 2026 Budget: What Changes, What Doesn't

Most of the property maths doesn't care who the buyer is

Most of what decides whether a property stacks up is entity-agnostic. Stamp duty is a capital acquisition cost whoever pays it — not annually deductible, added to the CGT cost base — and Plintha computes it exactly for all eight states and territories, verified against each revenue office. Land tax bracket maths is exact too; where the land value isn't known, Plintha estimates it at roughly 60% of the price for a house and flags the figure [ESTIMATE].

The cashflow engine runs on the same transparent defaults for every analysis, all overridable in Advanced: 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 price per year. Above 80% LVR the model adds LMI — which protects the lender, not the borrower, though the premium can usually be capitalised into the loan and deducted as a borrowing cost over five years or the loan term if shorter.

What an SMSF actually changes: the tax layer, not the deal

Once an entity rather than an individual owns the property, the tax treatment of every dollar shifts — and the 2026–27 Budget added moving parts on several fronts. For properties purchased or contracted from 12 May 2026, rental losses are deductible against other income only for new builds; established purchases after that date have their losses quarantined against future rental profits or the eventual capital gain, while anything owned or contracted before 12 May 2026 is grandfathered under the old rules. From 1 July 2027 the flat 50% CGT discount gives way to indexation-based treatment with an effective minimum of 30%. From 1 July 2028 a 30% minimum tax applies to trust distributions.

How each of those measures lands on a particular fund, in a particular year, given the fund's own circumstances and everything else the trustees have going on — that is precisely the kind of question that cannot be answered by a calculator with a handful of inputs. It requires the full picture, which only your accountant has.

Why Plintha deliberately doesn't model SMSF tax

Plintha does not model entity income tax for SMSF, company, or trust ownership. This is a design decision, not a gap. A tax figure that looks precise but rests on a guessed entity treatment is worse than no figure at all — it invites decisions built on false confidence. Instead, Plintha shows the complete pre-tax position and refers the entity tax question to your accountant, who can apply the fund's actual circumstances.

The same honesty runs through every number in a report. Each figure carries provenance: computed, [ESTIMATE] with the assumption shown, or [ASSUMED] from an overridable default. When something is an estimate, the report says so.

What an SMSF analysis in Plintha does give you

• —A verdict — Meets Criteria, Conditional, or Below Criteria — with a 0–100 score, assessed through two strategy lenses: Yield and Growth.
• —Property-class classification — grandfathered, new build, or established post-budget — since the class changes the tax modelling under the 2026–27 rules.
• —Depreciation modelling aware of the building's physical age: Division 43 capital works run at 2.5% per year straight-line over 40 years for residential buildings constructed after 15 September 1987, and since 2017 Division 40 deductions on second-hand residential plant are restricted — broadly only new plant qualifies for subsequent owners.
• —A stress test on every analysis: interest rates up 2%, extended vacancy, and the interest-only period expiring into principal-and-interest repayments.
• —A buyer's-agent conflict check that reads who pays whom on the deal and flags it — relevant given full-service buyer's agents commonly charge roughly $10,000–15,000 or a percentage of the price.
• —The pre-tax position in full, with the entity tax step handed to your accountant rather than guessed.

Common questions