The budget killed my daughter’s property plan. Here’s what we’ll do instead

July 11, 2026 — 5:01am

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When the budget hit in May, I was starting a book and a social media series with my 22-year-old daughter on how we can give our adult kids an epic start in life without just handing them a wad of cash.

She’s been learning the foundations of budgeting, saving and investing across the kitchen table with me since she returned from her gap year last year. And she’s been studying, working and saving hard for her next meaty goal – buying her first home.

We’d done the maths, and she was fairly confident that when she graduated from university next year, that she’d be able to use a couple of years living in our family home well, saving a healthy deposit, investing it diligently, and that she then would be prepared for her first foray into property within a year or two of graduating.

She had a plan to get on to the housing ladder by about 25, albeit in an investment property, because buying a unit she could afford the mortgage on while living in it as a single person, on a graduate teacher’s wage, was nigh on impossible.

Then she was going to take her time living at home, and see if she could build some equity in that investment property that she could later use to buy her first real home.

Then came the federal budget and that strategy became completely unviable.

But this isn’t really a story about tax change or growth rates. It’s a chance to rethink what ‘help your kids’ actually means.

The budget changed two pretty fundamental things. For established properties, bought after May 12, 2026, rental losses can no longer be offset against salary or wages, only against rental income and eventual capital gains – a major blow to young buyers without investment income to offset against.

And it changed the capital gains tax treatment on all assets held outside super from a 50 per cent discount on assets held over a year, replacing it with a 30 per cent minimum tax on real gains from July 1, 2027. Pretty much every generation is affected, but few more than those like my daughter who haven’t yet got their start in life.

Before the budget, my daughter could, if she saved a healthy deposit, have borrowed up to $700,000 to $750,000 and bought a rental property that gave her a........

© The Sydney Morning Herald