Rental Yield Calculator

Gross yield is one division. Take a year of rent, divide it by what you paid, and there it is. The tool above uses the purchase price on its own as the divisor, so stamp duty and legal fees aren't inside the number. Two calculators that pick different divisors will hand you different yields on identical inputs, which is worth knowing before you compare one site's figure against another's.

Net yield is where it gets loose. Subtract the expenses, everyone says. Which expenses is the part that decides the answer.

The loan stays out of both figures. Interest and principal are tracked as separate lines in the engine and neither one touches the yield. That's on purpose. Two people buying the same house with different deposits would otherwise get different yields on it, and the number would start describing their finance instead of the house.

So this one uses a list somebody else wrote. The ATO publishes what a rental owner can claim as an immediate deduction in the year they incur it, and that list runs to local council rates, body corporate fees and charges, public liability, repairs and maintenance, property agent's fees and commissions, land tax, water charges, pest control, gardening and lawn mowing, advertising for tenants, bank charges and more. The page carrying it was last updated 29 May 2025. The ATO also says you can only claim what you actually incur, so water usage your tenant pays isn't yours to deduct.

Four of the tool's five expense fields map straight onto that list: council rates, body corporate, maintenance and the management percentage, which the ATO names as property agent's fees and commissions in its own words. Insurance is the exception. It isn't on the ATO list quoted above, which carries public liability and loss of rent instead, so the insurance box traces to Moneysmart's ongoing-cost list. Add them up, take them off the year's rent, divide by the price.

A single expense box invites a single number, so people total up everything the property cost them that year and type it in.

Two of those costs the ATO won't let a residential rental owner claim at all: the decline in value of certain second-hand depreciating assets, and travel to inspect, maintain or collect rent for the property, unless the owner is carrying on a business of letting rental properties or is an excluded entity. A third runs the other way. Borrowing expenses over $100, which include lenders mortgage insurance the lender takes out and bills to you, loan establishment fees, mortgage broker fees and a valuation the lender required, get spread over five years from the day the loan is taken out, or the loan term if that's shorter.

So the page says which one it's showing you. The net yield here is built from four expenses the ATO allows as an immediate deduction, plus insurance, which Moneysmart lists as an ongoing cost of an investment property. Either way it won't match your bank statement line for line. The travel rule has a sharp edge for anyone buying away from home, because the trip to inspect isn't deductible, and a manager on the ground makes that visit instead.

Portal listings are the easiest rent figure to find. They show what an agent is asking, which is a different thing from what a tenant signed.

Rent is the whole numerator. Get it 10% high and the yield comes back 10% high. Queensland has a better source. The RTA works out median weekly rents each quarter by analysing new rental bond lodgements, so the figures come from tenancies that actually started. They break down by postcode, suburb, local government area and whole-of-Queensland, across dwelling types and bedroom counts. The RTA publishes medians instead of averages because a median doesn't get dragged by one unusually high or low figure in the series.

Look yours up in the RTA's median rents quick finder before you touch the rent field, and match the bedroom count. New quarters land in April, July, October and January, and the RTA asks that you compare year on year instead of quarter to quarter. No median is printed on this page, because the figure revises every quarter and the live one is one click away.

Rented weeks is the input people leave alone, and it's what separates an advertised yield from an achieved one. The ATO ties the expense side to the same period, because a deduction runs for the time a property is rented or genuinely available for rent. Moneysmart puts it more bluntly and tells investors to work out whether they could cover every expense short term with no tenants at all. Set it to 48 and watch both lines move.

It's the question everyone asks first, and plenty of pages have a number ready for it.

We went looking for one. Moneysmart tells investors to look for areas with high growth, higher rental yield and low vacancy rates, and never says what higher means. The RBA's Chart Pack has no rental yield chart in its household section. Neither of them publishes the number. Every source we found that does name a target yield turned out to be a commercial page.

One figure carries a publisher and a date. That figure describes where the market sat that month. Nothing in it tells you what your own property should hit. Moneysmart treats yield as one signal to look for alongside growth and vacancy rates, so a single number settles nothing. The question this tool can answer is narrower and more useful: after the expenses you entered, what does this property actually leave.

The engine carries five holding costs: council rates, body corporate, insurance, maintenance and the management percentage. Anything without a field doesn't exist inside it.

Add the ones you know into the maintenance field by hand and the net yield tightens up. Vacancy already has a home, in rented weeks. Everything on screen is an estimate built from what you typed, for one property, before tax.

FAA built this calculator. FAA also sells property. Both belong on the page. FAA Property Pty Ltd is a licensed Queensland real estate agency. Office of Fair Trading licence 4220395, real estate agent, current to 5 June 2027, and the number is on the OFT register if you want to check it. One office, at Suite 3-7, Level 5, Tower 2, 55 Plaza Parade, Maroochydore QLD 4558, phone (07) 5327 3469. FAA manages residential investment property across the Sunshine Coast from that office.

Now, how FAA gets paid.

FAA Property earns a commission from builders and developers when a property purchase proceeds. The strategy session itself costs you nothing. Because we're paid by the supply side, you should weigh our recommendations with that in mind.

FAA's licence covers selling and managing property. Tax and financial advice sit outside it, so nothing on this page is advice about your own position. What the calculator ignores has its own section further up this page.