How Does Selling a Share of My Home Affect My Age Pension?

Selling a share of your home — a fractional sale — turns part of what your home is worth into money you receive now, while you keep living there. Your home is one of the few things Centrelink leaves out of the Age Pension assets test altogether, for as long as it remains your home. The moment you sell a share of it, part of that value changes form: what was an exempt asset becomes money, or another asset, in your name.

What happens to your pension from there depends on your full financial position — how much you receive, what else you own, whether you’re single or partnered, and what you do with the funds — not on a single rule that applies the same way to every owner. This article sets out the general framework only: the assets test, the income test, and where your home sits inside both. It does not, and cannot, tell you what will happen to your own pension.

There is no blanket answer, and any source that gives you one without asking about your circumstances first should be treated with caution. Two things are true at the same time. Your home — the part you still hold — stays exempt from the assets test for as long as it remains your principal home; selling a fractional interest in it does not, on its own, change the principal-home exemption on the home you keep living in. Separately, the money you receive for the share you sell stops being part of an exempt home the moment it becomes cash, an investment, or another asset in your name — from that point, it can be assessed like any other financial asset you hold: counted under the assets test, and deemed to earn income under the income test, depending on the form it takes and how Services Australia classifies it.

Whether that combination moves your pension rate, and by how much, is a question about your specific position — how much you receive, what other assets and income you already have, and your relationship status all factor in. Services Australia, not this article, is the source for how those factors interact in your case.

What is the Age Pension assets test, and why is your home treated differently?

The assets test compares the value of your assessable assets against thresholds that determine whether you receive a full pension, a part pension, or no pension at all. As at July 2026, the full-pension limits are $333,000 for a single homeowner and $600,000 for a single non-homeowner, and $499,000 combined for a homeowner couple or $766,000 for a non-homeowner couple. Above those figures, the pension reduces on a sliding scale; the part-pension cut-off — where it reaches zero — sits at $733,500 for a single homeowner, $1,000,500 for a single non-homeowner, $1,102,500 for a homeowner couple and $1,369,500 for a non-homeowner couple (Services Australia).

Age Pension assets test — full-pension limit / part-pension cut-off	Homeowner	Non-homeowner
Single	$333,000 / $733,500	$600,000 / $1,000,500
Couple (combined)	$499,000 / $1,102,500	$766,000 / $1,369,500

Figures as at July 2026 (Services Australia).

Your principal home, plus up to 2 hectares of land around it, is exempt from this test entirely — its value doesn’t count towards any of the figures above, no matter how much the property is worth (Services Australia). That’s the exemption a fractional sale interacts with: it applies to the home you continue to hold and live in, not to money you’ve already converted out of it.

What is the income test, and how does deeming treat money from a sale?

The Age Pension also applies an income test alongside the assets test, and Centrelink pays whichever test produces the lower rate. For financial assets — bank accounts, shares, term deposits, and other investments — Centrelink doesn’t use your actual earnings. It applies deeming: an assumed rate of return, regardless of what the asset actually earns.

As at July 2026, deeming applies at 1.25% up to $66,800 in financial assets for a single person, or $110,600 combined for a pensioner couple, and 3.25% on amounts above those thresholds (Services Australia).

If proceeds from selling a share of your home are held as a financial asset — in a bank account or an investment, for example — the general deeming rule applies to them the same way it applies to any other financial asset. Whether that’s what happens to your proceeds, in what amount and from what date, is a question of how Services Australia classifies your specific asset once it assesses your situation.

The mechanism is the same one that applies to any way of turning home equity into money — a reverse mortgage, home reversion, or a fractional sale like the one MyBrix offers through FundMyProperty. Fractional property funding sells fractional economic interests — Brix — in your property to investors; you remain the registered legal owner of the property itself and receive funding in exchange for the share sold. That funding is proceeds, in the same sense the assets and income tests use the word: money that has left the exempt category your home occupied and entered a category the tests can apply to.

Services Australia’s published guidance, and the DSS Guide to Social Security Law behind it, cover the situations you’d expect: selling your whole home, moving into a care situation, and holding other real estate as an assessable asset. What neither publishes — checked as at July 2026 — is guidance on this exact case: how proceeds are treated when you sell a fractional or partial interest in a home you keep living in, as distinct from a full sale, a reverse mortgage, or home reversion. That gap is real, and it’s the reason this article stops at the general framework rather than promising a specific outcome for a fractional sale.

What is published, and what this article can state, is the general framework above: the home exemption applies to the home you keep; deeming and the assets test apply to financial assets you hold outside it. Where your specific proceeds sit, and what that means for your pension rate, is an assessment Services Australia makes on your circumstances — not a fixed outcome that applies to every owner who sells a share of their home.

Payments can be affected in ways specific to your situation — contact Services Australia’s free Financial Information Service before proceeding. That service is free, and can walk through how a decision like this interacts with your own pension, without being the body that decides your payment.

How does this fit with other ways to access your home’s equity?

A fractional sale is one of several ways to convert home equity into money. Others include a reverse mortgage, home reversion, or the government’s Home Equity Access Scheme (HEAS) — a Commonwealth loan rather than a sale. Each interacts with the Age Pension through the same assets test and income test described above, applied to whatever money or new asset results from that option; none is automatically better or worse for your pension than another, and each needs the same individual assessment before you commit to it.

Where can you get reliable information?

Services Australia publishes the current assets test thresholds, deeming rates and the Financial Information Service. Our guide to accessing home equity without a loan sets out the non-debt options generally, including a fractional sale. General information can map how the assets test and income test work; it can’t tell you what a fractional sale would do to your own pension. Services Australia’s Financial Information Service, or a licensed financial adviser, can.