28/07/2026
I put my tenants' rent up $50 a week last month. I didn't want to.
For years I'd been raising it ten dollars a year – barely a coffee's worth – because they're the kind of tenants you quietly pray to keep. They treat the house like it's theirs. Every inspection is a non-event.
Then Queensland changed the rules, and my goodwill turned into a liability.
Rent increases here are now tied to the property, not the tenant. Hold rent below market to reward a good tenant and you're locked into that number for a full year – even if they move out next week, you can't reset it for the next person. So the safe, rational move is to lift rent to market at every anniversary, no exceptions. A rule written to protect tenants from big increases just turned my gentle $10 into a $50 catch-up.
That's one state. The pattern's everywhere.
→ NSW: end a tenancy to sell, have the sale stall in a soft market, and you're banned from re-letting for six months. An empty, liveable home. In a rental crisis.
→ Victoria: leave a home empty and you're taxed up to 3% of its value a year. So one state fines you for the empty house the other won't let you fill.
→ Victoria again: gas and electrical checks every two years whether anything's changed or not. About $380 a year, quietly folded into the rent.
And the newest one, from 1 July – anti-money-laundering checks. Genuinely important; property is a real laundering channel. But the design is a circus. Your buyer's agent verifies you, the selling agent verifies you, your conveyancer verifies you, your accountant verifies you, your broker already did. Same passport, five times. The law even lets everyone rely on one check – except the liability stays with you if it's wrong, so nobody does. Everyone re-checks. Everyone pays.
None of this is theoretical. In a single month this year, 1,532 more rental homes were sold off than bought to rent out. Fewer rentals, tighter vacancy, higher rents – landing on the exact people every one of these rules was meant to protect. My $50 is a symptom.
If you're buying an investment property, regulation is now a yield input, not fine print. Which state, which rules, which costs – that's the difference between a smart buy and an expensive lesson. It's the part we read before you sign.
