What Are the Ongoing Costs of Owning a House vs Renting in Australia?
The ongoing costs of owning versus renting a home in Australia, compared side by side — mortgage, rates, insurance, maintenance and rent.
What are the ongoing costs of owning a house vs renting in Australia?
There’s no single dollar figure that settles this — the ongoing cost of owning depends on your loan, your property type and your location, and the ongoing cost of renting depends on your lease and your landlord’s arrangements. But the categories are fixed and worth listing side by side. Owning a home typically means mortgage repayments (interest and principal), council rates, water rates, home insurance, repairs and maintenance, and — for a unit or townhouse — body corporate or strata fees. Renting typically means the rent itself plus contents insurance, while the landlord generally carries the rates, building insurance, body corporate fees and most repairs.
Which costs more over time depends on your numbers, not a rule of thumb — this article sets out the categories so you can weigh them for your own situation.
Equity is the part of a property’s value you actually own outright — what’s left after subtracting what you still owe on it. Only the principal portion of a mortgage repayment adds to your equity; the interest portion, like rent, is money you don’t get back. That distinction matters throughout this comparison.
What ongoing costs come with owning a home?
| Cost | Who it applies to | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mortgage repayments (interest + principal) | Every owner with a home loan | Only the principal portion builds equity |
| Council rates | Every owner | Set and billed by the local council |
| Water rates and usage charges | Every owner | Varies by state and by usage |
| Home and contents insurance | Every owner | No published premium range exists |
| Body corporate or strata fees | Units and townhouses only | Covers building insurance and common areas |
| Repairs and maintenance | Every owner | Rises with the property’s age |
No government or consumer body publishes a standard figure for council rates, water rates and usage charges, home and contents insurance premiums, body corporate or strata fees, or home maintenance and repair costs — each is set individually by a council, water authority, insurer or owners corporation, and varies with the property. Budgeting for these means getting a specific quote or checking your own council notice, water authority, insurer or body corporate, not relying on a published range.
On the mortgage line specifically: as at July 2026, banks’ outstanding owner-occupier variable home loan rates average around 6.20% and new owner-occupier loans around 6.22% (RBA Table F6, May 2026) — a useful benchmark for the interest portion of a repayment, though your own rate depends on your lender and loan type. A smaller deposit generally means a larger loan balance and therefore a higher ongoing interest cost, all else equal. Since the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme’s expansion on 1 October 2025, eligible first home buyers can buy with a 5% deposit (2% for single parents or legal guardians) without paying lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) — but the trade-off is a larger loan and correspondingly larger ongoing repayments, an assumption worth stating explicitly rather than treating a smaller deposit as automatically cheaper overall.
Outside that scheme, LMI usually applies once borrowing exceeds 80% of the property’s value — see our guide to what lenders mortgage insurance is for how it works. No authoritative source publishes a standard premium range, so budgeting for it means using a lender or insurer’s own estimator, such as Helia’s LMI fee estimator, rather than a rule of thumb.
Land tax is generally not payable on the home you live in, though the mechanism differs by state. As at July 2026: NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia each give a principal place of residence a specific land tax exemption you generally need to have recognised or apply for (one PPR per owner); Western Australia and the ACT define land tax itself as applying only to residential property that isn’t a principal place of residence; Tasmania applies a zero land tax rate to land classified as principal residence land; and the Northern Territory does not levy land tax at all. Where land doesn’t qualify for the exemption, land tax thresholds and rates are then set separately by each state — for example, NSW’s general threshold sits at $1,075,000 of land value, frozen since the 2024–25 land tax year.
These ongoing figures sit on top of one-off costs at purchase — stamp duty (see our guide to first home buyer stamp duty concessions by state), conveyancing and a building and pest inspection among them. No government source publishes a standard fee range for conveyancing or building and pest inspections, so those are best treated as costs to quote for your specific property rather than a published figure — see our guides to what a conveyancer does, conveyancing fees and the fuller list of hidden costs of buying a home.
What ongoing costs come with renting?
| Cost | Who it applies to | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rent | Every tenant | Set by the lease, reviewed periodically |
| Contents insurance | Tenants who choose cover | Building insurance stays the landlord’s cost |
| Rates, building insurance, body corporate, most repairs | The landlord, not the tenant | A tenancy agreement generally shifts these costs across |
No published figure exists for weekly rent by capital city in this article — the ABS Housing Occupancy and Costs survey and each state’s rental bond board publish rent data, but no single current by-capital-city median is available from a verified source as at July 2026. Check the ABS and your state’s rental bond authority for the latest figures. Renter’s contents insurance premiums follow the same pattern as home insurance above — no government or consumer body publishes a standard figure, so a quote from an insurer is the only reliable guide.
Utilities such as electricity, gas and home internet are usually paid by whoever lives in the property, whether they own or rent it — those costs sit outside this owning-vs-renting comparison because they apply either way.
How do the two compare side by side?
Illustrative only, not a formula with numbers attached: owning’s ongoing cost = mortgage interest + rates + water + insurance + maintenance (+ body corporate, where it applies); renting’s ongoing cost = rent + contents insurance. Only the principal portion of a mortgage repayment builds equity — the rest of both lists is money that doesn’t come back.
Both sides carry costs that never convert into an asset. All of rent is one of them. On the owning side, the interest portion of a mortgage repayment, rates, insurance and maintenance behave the same way — only the principal repayment (and, over time, any change in the property’s value) adds to your net position, and property values can fall as well as rise. Whether the categories that don’t build equity add up to more on one side or the other over any given period depends on the loan size, the interest rate, the property type and the rental market — not on a general rule that owning always wins or renting always wins.
What else should you weigh, beyond the cost categories?
- Security of tenure vs flexibility. Owning removes the risk of a lease ending or not being renewed; renting makes it easier to relocate for work or family reasons without selling a property.
- Exposure to the property market. An owner’s equity moves with local property values, up or down; a renter isn’t exposed to that movement either way.
- Capital tied up vs capital available. A deposit and ongoing principal repayments lock up money in the property; renting keeps savings liquid for other uses, at the cost of not building equity.
- How long you expect to stay put. One-off buying costs (stamp duty, conveyancing, loan establishment fees) are spread over however long you keep the property — the longer you stay, the more they’re amortised.
The buying process itself also differs by state and territory, and the cooling-off period after signing is a clear example. As at July 2026: NSW and Queensland both give buyers 5 business days; Victoria gives 3 clear business days; South Australia gives 2 clear business days; the ACT gives 5 working days; the Northern Territory gives 4 business days; and Western Australia and Tasmania have no statutory cooling-off period at all — any right to withdraw there exists only if it’s negotiated into the contract. None of these periods apply once a property is sold at auction. Our step-by-step guide to buying a house in Australia covers the stages in more detail.
Which of these factors matters most is a personal call, not a factual one — a mortgage broker can model the repayment side for your numbers, and a financial adviser can help weigh it against your broader plans.
Where does fractional property investing fit into a rent-vs-buy decision?
Some readers weighing rent against buy are also looking at whether to put spare savings into a fractional economic interest in property — a Brix — while they decide. The honest starting point is a mismatch, not an opportunity: a Brix holding isn’t built to be turned into cash on a date you choose, and a deposit fund generally needs to be accessible on a known date. If you’re saving toward a deposit, that mismatch matters more than any potential upside.
Brix are a fractional economic interest in a specific property — a financial product under Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act, not ownership of the property and not a loan. Where MyBrix funds a property owner, the mortgage securing that funding is intended to be registered against the property; the owner remains the registered legal owner throughout. As at July 2026, the limits that come with a Brix holding include: liquidity is not guaranteed, exit waiting periods are typically 30–90 days, an early exit can carry a 10% fee calculated on your aggregate MyBrix holdings (including any NestEgg balance), there’s no statutory cooling-off period on the purchase, and proceeds may be paid as AUDD or a MyBrix voucher, at MyBrix’s discretion. NestEgg, MyBrix’s deposit-building product, is a separate mechanism from the First Home Super Saver Scheme (FHSS) — using one doesn’t affect your eligibility for the other, and the two shouldn’t be conflated.
This section doesn’t compare investment performance: MyBrix does not state or imply a typical or expected return on Brix, and rent-vs-buy figures elsewhere in this article aren’t a benchmark for one either. The tax treatment of any Brix distribution also depends on how a particular funding is structured — there’s no single ATO ruling that covers every case, and a general trust-income framework may or may not apply depending on that structure. Tax outcomes depend on your circumstances — speak with a registered tax agent before acting.
Whether it makes more sense to keep renting and hold some savings in Brix, or to direct every spare dollar toward a deposit, isn’t something this article can answer for you. The Product Disclosure Statement, the Target Market Determination and advice from a licensed financial adviser are the right basis for deciding.
So, does owning or renting cost less overall?
There’s no single answer — it depends on your loan size and rate, the property type, how long you stay, and what happens to the property’s value over that time, none of which this article can predict for you. What’s fixed is the list of categories on each side: owning carries mortgage interest, rates, water, insurance, maintenance and sometimes body corporate fees; renting carries rent and usually contents insurance, with the landlord bearing the rest. A mortgage broker can run the repayment numbers against your circumstances, and a financial adviser can help you weigh the trade-offs against your broader plans — including how a first home deposit fits into the picture, covered in our guide to how much deposit you need for a first home.
