Rent Vesting calculator
Discover if rent-vesting or buying in Gladstone is best for you. Compare costs, loan totals, and equity projections on current Gladstone medians.
Should you rent-vest in Central QLD?
Compare two paths side by side. Buy a home in Gladstone to live in, or keep renting and buy a cheaper investment property. You get the weekly cost, the loan totals and the projected 5 year equity for each.
Example rates used: 6.50% p.a. owner-occupier and 6.80% p.a. investor, set on 27 July 2026. Both are assumptions so the comparison can return figures, not lender quotes, not offers and not rates you are eligible for. Rates change without notice, and the rate you are offered varies by lender, loan type, deposit and credit profile. Put your own rates in the fields to see your own numbers.
Your current situation
A few numbers about you, so the comparison is realistic.
Option A, buy in Gladstone
Pick a Gladstone suburb, or set your own price.
Option B, rent-vest
Use a Gladstone unit preset, or set your own investment price.
Option B, rent-vesting, costs less per week.
What this calculator does not show
- Lenders Mortgage Insurance, the tiles flag it above 80% LVR, and no dollar figure is estimated anywhere on this page. A premium depends on the lender, the insurer sitting behind it, the LVR band, the loan size, the purpose and the postcode, and the two main insurers produce different figures on the same loan, so any percentage published here would be a guess dressed up as a number. On a small deposit it is thousands of dollars sitting outside every figure above. Coral runs your lender’s own LMI calculator and gives you the real one. Some first home buyers and medical professionals are exempt or pay a reduced cost.
- Land tax, a QLD investment property can push you over the land tax threshold once you own more than your home.
- Vacancy risk, a few weeks without a tenant can wipe out months of positive cash flow.
- Negative gearing and depreciation, tax effects change the real after-tax cost of Option B. Speak to your accountant.
- Capital gains tax, applies to the investment when you sell, not to the home you live in.
- First Home Owner Grant and duty concessions, only apply when you buy a home to live in, so you give those up if you rent-vest first.
Want a real plan, not just a calculator?
Rent-vesting is a structure decision, not only a maths decision. We look at your borrowing capacity, your lender options, and whether Option A or Option B actually gets approved on your file.
- Pre-approval applications lodged within 24 to 48 hours
- Access to ~70 lenders
- Local Gladstone market knowledge
- Usually no client fee, we are lender-paid
Important disclaimer. This page is general information only and does not constitute financial or credit advice. This calculator is provided free by AJ Home Loans Gladstone and gives estimates based on Gladstone QLD property data and example interest rates. Actual loan terms, rates, fees, repayments, borrowing capacity and tax outcomes vary by lender, loan type, deposit size, credit profile, property type and your personal circumstances, and lending criteria apply. Median sold prices, growth, days on market and rental yields are from realestate.com.au suburb profiles for the 12 months to June 2026, read on 27 July 2026. Medians describe the middle of past sales, not the price of any particular property, and they move. The example rates are assumptions set on 27 July 2026, not live lender rates, not offers, and rates are subject to change without notice. No Lenders Mortgage Insurance premium is estimated on this page; premiums are set by the lender and its insurer and are quoted individually. Property investment carries risk including vacancy, interest rate and capital loss risk. Please consult a qualified mortgage broker, accountant and financial adviser before making a rent-vesting decision.
AJ Home Loans Gladstone, Credit Representative 543487 of Australian Finance Group Ltd, Australian Credit Licence 389087. Results are indicative only and are not credit advice, a loan offer, a quote or a pre-approval.
What the two paths look like side by side
The tool starts from a Gladstone renter paying $500 a week with a $60,000 deposit. Option A buys the $560,000 Gladstone Central house median to live in. Option B keeps renting and buys a $370,000 Gladstone Central unit to rent out. Medians are the realestate.com.au figures for the 12 months to June 2026, and both sides use example rates set on 27 July 2026 that are assumptions rather than quotes.
| Option A, buy in Gladstone | Option B, rent-vest | |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly cost to you | $729 | $585 |
| Loan amount | $500,000 | $310,000 |
| LVR | 89.3% | 83.8% |
| LMI | Likely, amount not estimated | Likely, amount not estimated |
| Monthly repayment | $3,160 | $2,021 plus costs |
| Total interest over 30 years | $637,722 | $417,549 |
| Projected equity after 5 years, before LMI | $135,224 | $107,420 |
Option B costs $144 a week less, Option A builds $27,804 more equity
Both are true at once, which is the honest version of this comparison. Rent-vesting wins the weekly number because the unit is $190,000 cheaper than the house and the tenant pays part of it. Buying wins the equity number because you own the more expensive asset and every dollar of growth compounds on a larger base. The duty table further down then adds several thousand dollars to Option B on day one. Change the deposit, the rent or the growth rates and the answer moves, which is the point of running it yourself.
The inputs that decide the outcome
This is a comparison, which means the result is only as honest as the assumptions on each side. A handful of fields do most of the work, and it is easy to hand one option an advantage without noticing.
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Growth, on both sides
Each option has its own growth field and they both start at 1.5%. If you give the investment a higher growth rate than the home, you have assumed the answer rather than calculated it. Houses and units in Gladstone have not moved together historically, so if you do split them, have a reason.
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The rental yield
Gross annual rent divided by purchase price, before a single cost comes out. A yield that looks generous on paper is the fastest way to make Option B look better than it is.
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Annual ongoing costs
Rates, insurance, property management, maintenance and, on a unit, body corporate fees. The default is $3,500. On a Gladstone unit with a strata levy that is often light.
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The rent you actually pay
Under Option B you keep paying it for the whole period. It is the single largest number on that side of the comparison and the one people leave at the default.
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The deposit
The same deposit is applied to whichever path you take, so it moves both LVRs at once. Because Option B buys a cheaper property, the same cash buys a lower LVR there. On the default $60,000 both sides still land above 80%, so LMI is flagged on both, and no premium is estimated on either.
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The loan term on each side
Set separately for each option. A longer term on one side lowers that option’s weekly cost and raises its total interest, so leaving them mismatched quietly tilts the comparison before you have read the result.
The concessions you give up by not moving in
This is the largest item missing from the comparison above, and it lands on day one rather than over thirty years. Queensland’s home and first home concessions only exist for people who move in. Buy the same property as an investment and it is assessed at the general rate.
| Purchase | Transfer duty as an investment | Transfer duty as a first home to live in |
|---|---|---|
| $370,000 Gladstone Central unit | $11,375 | Nil |
| $540,000 West Gladstone house | $17,325 | Nil |
| $560,000 Gladstone Central house | $18,225 | Nil |
| $785,000 Tannum Sands house | $28,350 | Nil |
$11,375 of duty on Option B, nil on Option A
That is about a year and a half of the weekly saving rent-vesting shows above, and it does not appear anywhere in the weekly costs or the equity projection. It comes out of the deposit at settlement, so it also raises the LVR on the loan you end up with. The First Home Owner Grant, where you would have been eligible for it, is given up as well.
Two things the equity projection assumes
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That growth happens at all
The projection compounds whatever growth rate you enter, every year, without interruption. Both sides start at a deliberately conservative 1.5%. Gladstone has had a strong recent run, well into double figures over the 12 months to June 2026, and a strong year is not a forecast of the next thirty. Enter a growth rate you would be comfortable defending, then look at what the comparison says at zero.
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That the property is always tenanted
The shortfall figure assumes rent arrives fifty-two weeks a year. A few weeks vacant, one tenant who stops paying, or a hot water system at the wrong moment, and a year of positive cash flow is gone. A single-industry town concentrates that risk rather than spreading it.
How to pressure test the answer you got
Run the tool once and it gives you a number. Run it these five ways and it gives you a decision you can stand behind.
- 1
Set both growth rates the same
Then move them together, not separately. If Option B only wins when it is given more growth than Option A, the growth assumption is doing the work, not the strategy.
- 2
Take the growth to zero on both sides
This is the honest floor. If rent-vesting only makes sense with capital growth, you are relying on the one variable neither you nor anybody else controls.
- 3
Put realistic ongoing costs in
Get a body corporate disclosure statement for the specific unit rather than using the default. Strata levies vary enormously between Gladstone complexes and they are not optional.
- 4
Add the duty from the table above
Roughly $11,375 on a $370,000 investment unit, against nil if you were eligible as a first home buyer moving in. Carry that across to the equity column, because it comes out of your deposit.
- 5
Talk to an accountant before a broker
Negative gearing, depreciation, land tax and capital gains tax all change the real after-tax position, and none of them are in this tool. Those are an accountant’s call, not a broker’s.
Rent-vesting questions we get asked
Renting where you want to live while owning an investment property somewhere you can afford. It is more common in expensive capital city markets, where the gap between renting and buying the same home is wide. Gladstone house prices have moved up sharply over the past year, so on the default settings here rent-vesting now costs less each week than buying the median house, while buying still finishes ahead on five year equity and avoids the investment duty. Which of those matters more is your call, not the calculator’s.
A calculator can't read lender policy. Coral can. Call Coral on 0409 311 985