The deposit is never the number.
Who I am, why an airline pilot runs a buyer’s agency on data, and what I am not allowed to do for you.
This is my own investing history over twenty years — my money, my mistakes — not a list of client results.
This is the most recent quarterly run of the screen: which markets passed, which failed, and the numbers that decided it. Every rejected suburb is named.
This works out the cash you actually need on settlement day for an investment purchase in any state: deposit, stamp duty, legals, lender fees and insurance. It is the number that surprises people.
I rank every region in Australia on six measures of supply and demand, keep only the markets that pass all six, then look for a property inside those markets. The thresholds are written down before each run, so the answer cannot be bent to suit a property I already like.
Most people budget the deposit and get blindsided by the rest. Stamp duty alone can be half again what you saved for the deposit. Put your numbers in and see the whole figure before you start looking, not after.
Savings plus any equity you can release. Everything available to complete the purchase.
The contract price you are working to.
Duty is charged where the property sits, not where you live.
Below 20% the lender charges mortgage insurance. It protects them, not you, and you pay it.
Adjust the assumptions
Defaults are typical, not quoted. Replace any of them with a real number the moment you have one.
Your loan
This tells you the cash you need at the table. It says nothing about whether a lender will advance the rest. The borrowing power estimator runs that side of the arithmetic, though the number that finally counts comes from a broker putting your file to a named lender.
Holding costs
Rates, insurance, management, maintenance and the gap between rent and repayments. A purchase you can complete and cannot hold is a worse outcome than one you never made.
Concessions
Figures here use the standard investor rate in each state. First-home and owner-occupier concessions can cut duty sharply and some states remove it entirely. If you will live in it, your number is lower than this.