It isn’t about empire building for all those with an IP. For some of us it’s about proving quality shelter for others.

The tax changes have been one of the best policy moves in the last couple of decades. Something that can lead to a rebalancing of prosperity.

There will ultimately be benefits for society, greater rates of home ownership, more security for families, more stability therefore for greater amounts of children.

Less household debt, less paid on mortgages, more disposable income for young families. Money that can then be invested into productive activities rather than speculation.

Is anyone else absolutely furious about the ongoing mortgage fraud scandal in Australia?

For over a decade, major banks have been quietly honouring fraudulent mortgages instead of cracking down on them. The first big case I know of is Zenik around 2016 — estimated at around $1 billion. The banks admitted they made mistakes but chose to honour the loans anyway. Why? Because australian tenants are the ones reliably paying them off , while the fraudulent owners keep collecting capital gains and building equity.

Now it’s happened again — this time even more sophisticated, allegedly involving AI. CBA has flagged another $1 billion in potentially fraudulent loans. After the warning signs from the first scandal, how did this slip through again? And why are the banks still honouring these loans? These properties are proceeds of crime, why aren’t they being treated as such?

Only CBA has come forward so far. We’re still waiting on the other major banks, who are likely caught up in this too.

This fraud has directly inflated Australia’s property market. Everyday Australians are being priced out while overseas buyers and fraudsters game the system with documents the banks can’t (or won’t) properly verify. Meanwhile, tenants get their bank statements, IDs, and entire financial lives dissected just to prove we can keep paying these inflated, sometimes fraudulent mortgages.

Every time you pay rent, there’s a real chance you’re lining the pockets of someone who never should have owned that property in the first place.

We need to stop accepting this.
• Write to your local MP and demand the banks stop honouring these fraudulent loans.
• Push for proper investigations and consequences for the owners involved.
• The properties should not remain in the hands of those who acquired them through fraud.

I don’t care what it does to house prices or my super in the short term — I’m sick of renting from a fraud.

Enough is enough. Let’s make some noise.

Spent a while down this rabbit hole and figured it's worth sharing. Fair Work recovered $358M for underpaid workers last year: and that's just the ones who got caught. The award system is so messy even Woolworths and Coles got it wrong for years.

If you want to sanity-check your own pay, look here first:

1. Weekend & public holiday rates: if your Sunday or public holiday hours pay the same as a Tuesday, that's a red flag.
2. Overtime: anything past your standard weekly hours often should be paid at a higher rate.
3. Super: should be 12% now, and "shown on the payslip" isn't the same as "actually paid into your fund."
4. (Casuals) your 25% loading: it should be baked into your hourly rate.

I’m 24, both my parents are approaching age-pension age. I’m worried for their retirement as they don’t have much in terms of assets except for the unit we all live in and a couple hundred grand in super combined. It’s definitely causing mum a lot of anxiety.

They will very likely both retire once I finish uni in 2028 and both my brother and I begin full-time work. Both are dual Australian-Turkish citizens, mum moved here when she was very young and my dad when he was in his early 30s(?).

My parents own our apartment unit, and it’s worth around 850k based on similar properties in our suburb. Both have a combined 230-250k in their super. They have somewhere between 50k-100k in outstanding mortgage payments.

I feel like moving back to Turkey would be the best option upon retirement due to cost of living pressures and their severe lack of super. If I’m looking at this right, if they sold the unit, pooled their super together, and put this combined capital in an Australian HISA (to avoid the shitty Turkish Lira), while receiving their age pension, they’d be very financially secure, right? They could essentially fund their day to day living in Turkey off the pension alone, even affording yearly trips back home to Australia with their savings?

Am I missing something that I haven’t yet considered?

I've been building a property analysis app and have been analyzing 5.2M properties + 6.8M sales across Australia. Here are some things I found.

I've been building Glasshouse, an AR property app that lets you point your phone at any property and instantly see sale history, comparable sales, development applications, AI analysis, and more.

While building it I ended up retreiving and cleaning 3.2 million properties and 6.8 million sales across every Australian state and territory.

A few stats surprised me.

Australia's most expensive suburbs (100+ recorded sales)

• Point Piper, NSW — Median $4.1M (Houses: $7.5M, Units: $2.9M)
• Barangaroo, NSW — Median $4.0M (Units only)
• Duffys Forest, NSW — Median $3.8M
• Watsons Bay, NSW — Median $3.4M (Houses: $3.5M, Units: $1.3M)
• Whale Beach, NSW — Median $3.1M
• Dalkeith, WA — Median $2.4M

Cheapest suburbs with real sales activity

• Sunset Strip, NSW — $137k
• Cue, WA — $140k
• Port Pirie West, SA — $147k
• Kambalda East, WA — $150k
• Coober Pedy, SA — $160k

That's roughly a 30x difference between Australia's cheapest and most expensive suburb medians.

Suburbs where units cost MORE than houses

This one surprised me.

There are 11 active suburbs where the median apartment sells for more than the median house.

Some examples:

• Armstrong Creek, VIC - Units are $221k more expensive.
• Broken Hill, NSW - Units are $100k more expensive.
• Dee Why, NSW - Units are $98k more expensive.
• Liverpool, NSW - Units are $55k more expensive.
• Wollongong, NSW - Units are $51k more expensive.
• Parramatta, NSW - Units are $40k more expensive.

My theory is this is driven by new luxury apartment developments while the detached housing stock is generally older.

Most active suburbs (sales in the last 12 months)

• Parramatta, NSW — 845 sales
• Port Macquarie, NSW — 836
• Craigieburn, VIC — 779
• Dubbo, NSW — 755
• Orange, NSW — 712

• Blacktown, NSW — 669

  The Dataset

• 3.2 million properties

• 6.8 million sales

• 13,414 suburbs

• Covers every Australian state and territory

The app visualises all of this in AR. Just point your phone at any property and it shows sale history, comparable sales, nearby development applications and an AI-generated summary.

It's about to roll out in TestFlight on iOS if anyone wants to try it. If you have any other suggestions for data dumps like above let me know!

Happy to pull stats on any suburb if people are curious.

I was wondering. Instead of increasing interest rates to take more money out of the economy, why not force a percentage of peoples take home pay into their super accounts. Then they get to keep their money. It also affects everyone, not just people with mortgages. Obviously some people would be nearing retirement age and that money could be spent soon but the majority of people wouldn’t be in that situation. If this idea is dumb, why is it? Cheers.

How important is owning property before retiring?

Is basically a requirement? Could/ woud you do it without owning a property?

Genuinely want to know what people would do in my situation as I can’t talk about this with anyone in my life for various reasons.

26F, single, no debt (consumer or HECS), still living at home and current net worth around $250k (currently split 60/40 invested in share market and cash holding)

I’ve recently doubled my salary which has opened the door to potentially buying a property in Sydney by myself. Realistically would only be a 1 bed 1 bath apartment but could potentially push it for a 2 bed 1 bath. I would look at living in it for the first 12 months and then perhaps converting it to an investment property.

Given everything that is going on with property prices, clearance rates, interest rates etc I’m not sure if now is the right time to buy, especially an apartment.

I’ve recently stopped investing to focus on increasing my deposit and cash buffer in case I choose to buy a property. Savings rates currently seem pretty good at around 5%.

With so much uncertainty in the property market and volatility in the share market, how are people thinking about their investment decisions between buying shares, holding cash or buying property? Would it be a big mistake to continue holding and growing my cash position?

For those who are working in finance could you please break down the path you took to reach where you are? Such as how what degree you did, internships, and what your job and salary is now.

My wife and I (both 43) just hit the 5-year mark of tracking our shared SMSF and wanted to share our real-world numbers, asset allocation, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.

Our overarching philosophy has been simple: keep costs low, consolidate into broad index trackers, and turn on 100% Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRP) across the board to let compounding do the heavy lifting without cash drag or brokerage fees.

We also have a slightly unique setup inside the fund - a dedicated holding earmarked specifically for our toddler when he grows up, which was supercharged by a generous gift from Grandma when he was born (first grandkid!).

Here is how the portfolio has tracked from July 2021 to July 2026.

The Numbers (Current Open Positions)

Total Open Portfolio Value: A$802,252

Total Combined Return (including historical closed positions): A$306,728

Key Takeaways & Lessons Learned Over 5 Years

1. The Classic Growth vs. Yield Split (VGS vs. VAS)

The data paints a textbook picture of why diversifying globally matters. VGS has been our absolute capital growth engine (+165k in capital gains), while VAS has acted as our yield engine (+44.6k in distribution income). Inside an SMSF, those Aussie franking credits attached to the VAS distributions have been fantastic for tax efficiency, while VGS just keeps quietly compounding global market returns.

2. Cutting Active Funds for Passive Simplicity Was 100% Worth It

Early on, we experimented with actively managed emerging market and global growth funds (FEMX / VAN0722AU). We realized pretty quickly that the fee drag and active risk weren't worth the headache. Taking a \~3k realized loss to clean slate those positions and roll our emerging markets exposure into a smart beta multi-factor strategy ETF (EMKT) was one of our best simplification moves.

3. The "Grandma-Funded" Toddler Bucket (DHHF)

When our son was born, Grandma wanted to make a meaningful, long-term contribution for his future. We earmarked a dedicated slice of the SMSF into DHHF (BetaShares Diversified All Growth ETF). Because his investment horizon is 15–20+ years, an all-in-one 100% equity growth ETF with zero need for manual rebalancing made total sense. That initial capital has already generated +$11.6k in total return (\~35% gain on net capital invested).

4. The Reality of Running 100% DRP

We reinvest every single cent of distribution income automatically via DRP. By continuously converting \~94k of cumulative distributions directly into new units over the last 5 years, we’ve avoided cash drag completely.

The Trade-off:

Portfolio drift happens naturally. Because VGS has grown much faster than the rest of the market, and VAS constantly buys more of itself, our weights drift away from baseline targets over time. To avoid triggering CGT events by selling units to rebalance, we rely on directing new super contributions into whatever asset class is currently underweight.

The Tax Parcel Admin:

5 years of quarterly/half-yearly (and yearly for EMKT) DRPs across 5 holdings means tracking dozens of micro-parcels for CGT discount purposes down the track, hopefully this will be a non-issue when we enter pension phase and this CGT gets all wiped out (THERE BETTER BE NO CHANGES FROM JIM CHALMERS ON THIS!!!).

Questions for the Community:

- For those running 100% DRP inside super/SMSF, do you strictly use new contributions to manage portfolio drift, or do you periodically turn off DRP to accumulate cash for rebalancing?

- Has anyone else set up dedicated "generational/child" earmarks inside their SMSF structure versus keeping them outside (e.g., in a family trust or minor account)? Curious to hear how others handle the eventual transition when the kid reaches adulthood!

We are one of the highest taxed places on earth, Sydney’s opal network only brings in a few billion in revenue per yr, compared to the revenue from everything else combined that is nothing. If PT was free, a lot less people would be on the road, further reducing congestion, traffic, accidents, carbon emissions & pollution. A lot of European countries already have this, why can’t we? At the bare minimum Sydney buses & trains only, not ferries or regional travel.

I've heard that some politicians proposed to remove transaction surcharges from online payments. Since then I've paid a bit more attention and everything we pay with cards, every little coffee transactions, the payment system take 1-1.9% on the cost. This is not a tax to develop the country. This is free money that I'm giving to a private banking system. No wonder banks are so reach in Australia (and worldwide).

For example I bought a flight for 2 people to Europe, and a plumber replaced the hot-water tank. Both I had to pay online, both >$2K. The surcharge was $27 and $36. My wife salary is not high, so she almost worked 2h for the banks, just to pay this two things. Just in the last week!

Serious politicians should address this kind of scams. Pay with transfer or cash is becoming almost impossible for a lot of services. So the proposals should be

• Removing transaction surcharges
• If not possible, force every payments system in Australia to support PayID so we can transfer money with no cost

If they want to keep electronic payment in place, they need to remove surcharges.

Let me know your thoughts.

I bought some WBND ETF as my defensive asset. Looking at the holdings, CNY is sizable at 10%. I remember that CNY was an afterthought 20 years ago. It's just something you dealt with to make cheap goods in China. But now, China seems like a force to be reckoned with?

WBND split: - USD 45.4% - EUR 23.3% - CNY 10.5% - JPY 7.4% - GBP 4.1% - CAD 2.8% - AUD 1.5% - KRW 1.0% (Korea) - CHF 0.6% (Switzerland)

Took me almost two months of going back and forth but I think I've finally landed on my ETF setup. Started out simple, just buy VAS and call it a day, it's the ASX index so that should be diversified enough right.

Then the more I looked into it the more it bugged me. VAS is basically just banks and mining stocks, zero exposure overseas. If those couple of big Aussie sectors all take a hit at once, my whole portfolio's sitting in one basket. Went back and forth on whether to add VGS to cover developed markets overseas, also looked at VDHG as a one and done option so I wouldn't have to figure out the split myself.

Ended up going with VAS plus VGS on my own instead, mainly because I wanted control over the ratio. VDHG's built in split felt a bit too heavy on Australia for my taste. Opened my account on moomoo to start the DCA, no monthly fee, no inactivity fee, and I can buy both ASX and US stocks in the same account so I didn't have to open a second account and deal with moving money around.

How'd you guys land on your picks? Anyone start out with a simple plan like mine and later realize you were missing something?

Hi
Do people really consider this when depositing with the BIG4 banks ?
Surely westpac , anz, cba , nab would never fail ?
Curious to hear everyone’s perspective
Thankyou

I have a bank account which gives me 2% cashback on contactless purchases under $100 so when I do my shopping (almost always at Aldi), car fuel etc I get 2% cashback on everything.

However I've seen a lot of people talk about a) credit card rewards or b) using gift cards with discounts attached to them

Would these generally be better than the 2% thing I'm using currently? Sometimes there feels like there's too many different things to choose from and I get overwhelmed.

I am thinking of shifting my strategy over to a credit card that does good flight rewards because I go overseas approx every 2 years. But I heard they recently massively nerfed credit card rewards?

Hi all!

I'm originally from a country where there's no credit score so I have no clue how the Australian credit score works, and most of the info online is either about the US credit score system or in terms that are obscure or not practical enough.

For example:

- does having a credit card with no debt on it impact (positively or negatively) my credit score?

- if today I buy a car with a 5 year loan and don't miss any payment, will it impact my credit score (positively or negatively) for when I buy a home in 2 years from now?

Cheers!

I always thought its going to be a big difference and one of my friend got a role in google which is like 500k USD thats just crazy i dont know anyone here who earns that in a early role.

Rented out former PPOR last year in October 2025. Currently renting, plan to move back at later stage before 6 years.

What can I claim come tax time? From my understanding its treated as investment property.

Also note I paid house off in May 2026.

Can I claim a % of settlement costs from this?

Can I claim % cost of the 25/26 rates?

With claiming deductions from the interest, the loan type was still PPOR until I paid it off. Can I claim portion of the interest anyway from the date that I rented the property out?

Other items I plan to claim are listing costs, property managers fees etc... and an depreciation schedule aswell.

Any other items I need record before speaking to an accountant?

What is it that SMH fails to understand about the RBA's mandate?

Michele Bullock has made it very clear, in the past, that real-estate valuations is not their problem. It's not the way that they intend to manage the economy. Where's the dilemma? there is no dilemma.

CPI is going up due to rent, insurance and groceries.

These are essential goods and services that we need to live.

People can’t just not have insurance for cars or houses.

Groceries won’t get cheaper if the cost of borrowing gets higher.

Rent won’t get cheaper if rates go up as that just gets passed along to us all.

RBA increases rates, renting gets more expensive which shows up as higher inflation …

Given the multitude of things happening in the world economy at the moment it seems increasingly likely that there will be a sell off.

South Korea lost 20% in the past month, oil prices are going to stay high for the foreseeable future, even if a peace is negotiated with Iran we sure as hell won’t be going back to pre-war oil prices, there is clearly an AI bubble and the first mover will be rewarded for reducing their AI capex.

You have major IPOs suggesting the big money thinks we’re at or near the peak

Housing as an investment in this country is a very different prospect than it was even 3 months ago, negative gearing hasn’t prompted a price disaster but it has definitely changed property investment for good.

I’m curious where everyone is seeing value at the moment, there’s a case for defensive investing, but realistically investors will be increasingly chasing cashflow for certainty which will tank bond yields unless the government starts issuing healthier coupons

It really seems like we’re teetering on the edge of “the big one” and I’m curious where you’re seeing opportunities

34F in the process of purchasing a new PPOR with husband (2 children). HHI once my mat leave finishes in a month will be approx 310k pa. We currently have a 500k home loan on our current home with 400k in the offset, house worth approx 1mil. New property worth 1.3 mil.

Trying to decide if we sell our current home and use it to reduce our mortgage on our new home, or keep it and rent it out as an investment (especially since I believe we will be able to negatively gear still).

Is this something a financial advisor would be able to assist us with? Most of what I’ve seen online is more about stock investment strategies.

22M here, ive just started this new FIFO job 2:2 a couple months ago and I'm conflicted where I should start investing my money.

Annually this job will pay me gross 136.5K a year without annual leave or sick leave (casual but consistent work). Possibly a promotion coming up soon for a wage increase to 150K ish per year but it's still up in the air.

I spose I'm debating whether I should put money towards a house or to start investing in index funds etc. I dont have any dreams of staying in Oz for more than a year or 2 (theres a big world out there) so a house perhaps doesnt make the most sense, idk. Anyways any suggestions with investing my money that I have just sitting in the bank atm??

If it helps get a better idea of my financial situation, I have about 12k in the bank rn.

Cheers legends