Rental Yield Calculator for Australian Investors 2026

A rental yield calculator turns two numbers you already know — what a property costs and what it rents for — into the one number that tells you whether it's actually worth owning. The maths is simple. The part that trips people up is everything that sits between the gross figure and the net one.

Most investors in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane run the gross sum in their head at the open home, get a number that looks fine, and never check it again. Then the first strata levy lands, the managing agent takes their cut, and the return quietly halves.

This guide gives you the formulas, a yield reference table you can use on your phone at an inspection, the real holding-cost benchmarks we build into Leadkit's free investment property yield calculator, part of our finance and property calculator library, and a full worked example that follows a $750,000 property from a 3.8% gross yield down to what it actually costs you each week.

Last updated: August 2026

Key takeaways

• Gross rental yield = (weekly rent × 52) ÷ purchase price × 100. A $750,000 property renting at $550 a week returns a 3.8% gross yield.
• Net rental yield subtracts holding costs but not loan repayments. The same property, with standard Australian holding costs, drops to a 2.2% net yield — a gap of about 1.6 percentage points.
• Holding costs typically consume 35–45% of gross rent. In the worked example below, $12,000 of the $28,600 annual rent never reaches the owner.
• A "good" gross rental yield in Australia is generally read as above 5% for high-yield, 3–5% for typical capital-city stock, and below 3% for growth-focused property. Houses in capital cities usually sit lower than units.
• Yield is not cash flow. A property can show a positive net yield and still cost you $400 a week once principal-and-interest repayments are included.
• Units carry a strata drag houses don't. Body corporate fees of $4,000 a year on a $600,000 unit wipe roughly 0.67 percentage points straight off the net yield.
• Depreciation deductions are the cheapest lever most investors ignore — worth roughly $2,400 a year in tax at the 30% marginal rate on a typical schedule.

This is a price indication only. Your tradie will confirm the final price after assessing the job — and for investment figures specifically, your broker or accountant should confirm the numbers against your own circumstances before you buy.

Table of contents

• How do you calculate rental yield in Australia?
• What weekly rent do you need to hit each yield?
• Gross vs net rental yield — what's the difference?
• What holding costs eat into your net yield?
• A worked example from 3.8% gross to 2.2% net
• What is a good rental yield percentage in 2026?
• Why rental yield and cash flow are not the same thing
• How negative gearing and depreciation change the numbers
• Houses vs units and the strata drag on investment property yield
• How to use the rental yield calculator
• FAQ
• Run your numbers now

How do you calculate rental yield in Australia?

Rental yield is annual rental income expressed as a percentage of the property's value. Gross rental yield = (weekly rent × 52) ÷ purchase price × 100.

That's the whole formula. A property bought for $750,000 that rents for $550 a week earns $28,600 a year, which is a gross rental yield of 3.8%.

Net rental yield uses the same denominator but a smaller numerator:

Net rental yield = (annual rent − annual holding costs) ÷ purchase price × 100.

Two things about that formula catch people out.

First, holding costs are not loan repayments. Net yield measures the property's performance, not your financing decision. Two investors buying identical units get identical net yields even if one pays cash and the other borrows 90%.

Second, the denominator is a choice. Most Australian calculators — including Leadkit's — use the purchase price, because that's the number you can verify. Some analysts use total acquisition cost instead, adding stamp duty, legals and building inspections, which produces a slightly lower and arguably more honest yield. Whichever you pick, use it consistently, or you'll compare two properties on two different rulers. You can size the acquisition side of that with the stamp duty calculator.

What weekly rent do you need to hit each yield?

Here's the reverse calculation — the weekly rent a property needs to command at a given purchase price to hit a target gross yield. Screenshot this one for open homes.

Read it the other way and the capital-city problem becomes obvious. A $1.1 million house needs $1,058 a week to return 5% gross. Very little inner-Sydney or inner-Melbourne stock rents at that level relative to price, which is why yields in those markets sit where they do and why investors there are buying growth, not income.

Figures calculated on a 52-week year with no vacancy allowance. This is a price indication only — actual rents depend on the suburb, the property and the market at the time you lease it.

Want the net figure rather than the gross one? Run the free investment property yield calculator — it returns gross yield, net yield, weekly cash flow and the after-tax position in one go.

Gross vs net rental yield — what's the difference?

Gross rental yield ignores every cost of ownership. Net rental yield subtracts them. The difference between the two on a typical Australian investment property is 1.5 to 2 percentage points.

Gross yield is a screening tool. It's fast, it's comparable across listings, and every agent quotes it. Use it to shortlist.

Net yield is the decision tool. It's the number that tells you whether the property funds itself or funds a hobby.

Here's the practical difference in one line: a 5% gross yield and a 3% net yield describe the same property. If someone quotes you a yield without saying which one it is, assume gross, because gross is the flattering number.

The gap between them is not fixed. It widens with:

• Strata properties — body corporate levies are pure net-yield drag with no equivalent on a freestanding house.
• Older stock — higher maintenance and repair budgets.
• Full-service management — a 10% management fee instead of 5% costs you roughly 0.15 percentage points of yield on a typical property.
• Land tax liability — once your land holdings cross your state's threshold, the bill lands every year. Check the current threshold with your state revenue office, such as Revenue NSW.

What holding costs eat into your net yield?

Holding costs on an Australian investment property typically run 35–45% of gross rent. These are the default assumptions built into Leadkit's investment property yield calculator, along with the ranges we set them from.

Methodology and disclosure: these figures are the default assumptions and guidance ranges configured in Leadkit's own investment property yield calculator, one of 26 calculators in our finance and property vertical (15 of which return an instant estimate rather than simply collecting an enquiry). They're our tool and our numbers, not neutral third-party research — we've published the assumptions so you can sanity-check them against your own quotes rather than take them on trust. This is a price indication only.

When we built that calculator we set the defaults from current Australian rates rather than round numbers — 7% management, $4,000 strata, 6.5% on the investor loan — because the yield figures that disappoint people are almost always the ones worked out without them.

Two costs deserve a specific flag.

Vacancy. None of the tables above assume a vacant week. Two weeks of vacancy a year knocks roughly 4% off your gross rent, which on a 3.8% gross yield takes you to about 3.65% before you've paid a single bill. Budget for it.

The sinking fund. In a strata scheme, part of your quarterly levy goes to the administrative fund (day-to-day running) and part to the capital works fund, often still called the sinking fund — the pool that pays for the roof, the lifts and the repaint in fifteen years. A scheme with a thin capital works fund is a special levy waiting to happen, and special levies don't show up in any yield calculation until they arrive.

A worked example from 3.8% gross to 2.2% net

Here's the full path from headline yield to what actually lands in your account, using the calculator's default scenario: a $750,000 property renting at $550 a week, with a $600,000 loan at 6.5% p.a. over 30 years.

Three things fall out of that table.

Holding costs took $12,002 — 42% of the gross rent. That's the single biggest reason gross yield oversells a property.

The gross-to-net gap is 1.6 percentage points. If you're comparing a 4.5% gross listing against a 3.9% gross listing, the ranking can flip once real costs go in, particularly if one is a high-levy unit and the other is a house.

The −$556 weekly figure is a financing outcome, not a property outcome. Roughly $6,500 of those repayments is principal in year one — money moving from your pocket to your equity, not money lost. On an interest-only basis the same property runs at about −$431 a week. Same property, same yield, very different-looking number.

This is a price indication only. Your broker or accountant will confirm the final figures after reviewing your circumstances.

What is a good rental yield percentage in 2026?

In the Australian market, a gross rental yield above 5% is generally treated as high-yield, 3–5% as typical for capital-city stock, and below 3% as growth-focused. On a net basis, 3% or better after holding costs is a reasonable benchmark for a genuinely income-producing property.

Those bands are conventions investors use, not an official statistic. For current, verifiable yield data by suburb and dwelling type, go to a dedicated market data provider such as CoreLogic or SQM Research, and cross-check rent movements against the Australian Bureau of Statistics rents series in the CPI release.

The honest answer to "what's a good yield" is that it depends what you need the property to do. A 6.5% yield in a single-industry regional town and a 3.2% yield in an established Brisbane suburb are different bets, not better and worse versions of the same one. High yield tends to buy you cash flow at the cost of growth; low yield tends to buy you growth at the cost of holding it.

What matters more than the number is whether you can service the property through a vacancy, a rate rise or a special levy — sometimes all three in the same year.

Why rental yield and cash flow are not the same thing

Yield measures the property. Cash flow measures your position in it. A property with an excellent 5.5% net yield can still run at negative cash flow if you borrowed heavily to buy it.

The distinction matters because lenders, agents and forums use the words loosely.

• Net yield = (rent − holding costs) ÷ price. Excludes the loan entirely.
• Pre-tax cash flow = net rental income − loan repayments. Includes principal and interest.
• After-tax cash flow = pre-tax cash flow adjusted for the tax effect of the rental loss or profit.

Two investors buying the identical unit will report the identical net yield and wildly different cash flow, purely because one has a 60% LVR — loan-to-value ratio, the share of the purchase funded by debt — and the other has 90%.

This is also where serviceability bites. Australian lenders assess your ability to repay at a buffer above the actual rate, under prudential standards overseen by APRA, and they typically only count a portion of your expected rent as income. A property that stacks up on yield can still fail on serviceability. The borrowing power calculator will give you a ballpark before you get too attached to a listing.

How negative gearing and depreciation change the numbers

Negative gearing lets you deduct a rental property's loss against your other assessable income. It doesn't improve the yield — it reduces the cost of holding a property whose yield doesn't cover its costs.

Take the worked example. Net rental income of $16,598, less $39,000 of annual interest, gives a rental loss of about $22,400. At a 30% marginal rate that's worth roughly $6,700 back at tax time, lifting the after-tax position from −$28,900 to about −$22,200 a year.

Then there's the deduction most investors leave sitting on the table.

Depreciation is a non-cash deduction — you claim it without spending anything in that year. It splits into two parts:

• Division 40 — plant and equipment: the dishwasher, the carpet, the air conditioner, the blinds. Each item depreciates over its own effective life.
• Division 43 — capital works: the structure itself, deductible at 2.5% per year for 40 years on eligible construction.

A quantity surveyor prepares the depreciation schedule — a report costing a few hundred dollars that's itself deductible, and the only document the ATO accepts as the basis for construction-cost estimates. On a schedule worth around $8,000 a year, the same $750,000 example picks up roughly $2,400 more in tax benefit at the 30% marginal rate, taking the annual after-tax cost from about $22,200 to about $19,800.

Eligibility rules for second-hand plant and equipment changed in 2017 and vary by when and how you acquired the property, so confirm your own position against the Australian Taxation Office guidance on rental property deductions, or with your accountant. If negative gearing is the part you're weighing up, our negative gearing explainer for Australian investors works through it in detail, and the negative gearing calculator in the same library runs the tax position on your own figures.

One thing worth planning for early: the deductions you claim along the way affect the cost base when you eventually sell, which feeds straight into the capital gains tax you pay on an investment property when you sell.

Houses vs units and the strata drag on investment property yield

Units generally show higher gross rental yields than houses, and lower net yields, because strata levies hit the net figure and nothing else does.

Run it as a comparison. A $600,000 unit renting at $520 a week returns 4.5% gross. A $900,000 house renting at $700 a week returns 4.0% gross. On the headline number the unit wins comfortably.

Now add $4,000 of annual body corporate levies to the unit and nothing to the house. That $4,000 is 0.67 percentage points of yield on a $600,000 property, gone before any other cost. The gap narrows to almost nothing, and if the scheme has a lift, a pool or a gym, the levies climb and the house takes the lead.

That's not an argument against units. It's an argument for reading the strata report before the contract — specifically the capital works fund balance, the levy history and any special levy already flagged. The single most useful five minutes you'll spend on a unit purchase is the strata report, not the yield sum.

Land content cuts the other way. Houses carry more land value, which is what drives long-term capital growth and also what pushes you toward your state's land tax threshold. Leadkit's property growth calculator models that side of the equation over your intended holding period.

How to use the rental yield calculator

You need five numbers to get a meaningful net yield, and you already have four of them.

1. Purchase price — the contract price, excluding stamp duty and legals.
2. Estimated weekly rent — check recent comparable leases in the same suburb and dwelling type, not the asking rents.
3. Loan amount and interest rate — for the cash flow figures. Investor rates sat around 6.3–6.8% p.a. in 2026.
4. Holding costs — council rates, strata, insurance, maintenance, management fee and land tax. The calculator pre-fills all six with Australian defaults, so you can start with those and refine as your quotes come in.
5. Your marginal tax rate — only needed if you want the after-tax position.

The calculator returns gross yield, net yield, weekly cash flow, the negative gearing benefit or tax payable, and the after-tax annual position, then emails you a copy of the breakdown.

A note on what to run and when. Leadkit's finance and property library includes both instant-estimate tools and enquiry forms, and they do different jobs. The investment property yield calculator linked throughout this guide does the maths and shows you the numbers on screen. The rental yield enquiry form is a different thing entirely — it doesn't show a yield figure or run a formula. It passes your property details and suburb to a specialist who reviews them and calls you back. Use the calculator when you want a number now; use the enquiry form when you want a person to look at a specific deal.

FAQ

Q: How do you calculate rental yield in Australia?

A: Multiply the weekly rent by 52 to get annual rent, divide by the purchase price, then multiply by 100. That gives you gross rental yield. For net rental yield, subtract your annual holding costs — council rates, strata levies, landlord insurance, maintenance, property management fees and land tax — from the annual rent before you divide. Loan repayments are deliberately left out of both, because yield measures the property's performance rather than how you financed it. Leadkit's investment property yield calculator does both calculations at once and adds the weekly cash flow figure.

Q: What is a good rental yield percentage?

A: Above 5% gross is generally considered high-yield in Australia, 3–5% is typical for capital-city property, and below 3% is usually growth-focused stock bought for capital appreciation rather than income. On a net basis, 3% or better after holding costs is a reasonable benchmark. But "good" depends entirely on your strategy — a high-yield regional property and a low-yield inner-Sydney house are solving different problems. Higher yield usually means lower capital growth, and vice versa. Judge the yield against what you need the property to do and whether you can hold it through a vacancy or a rate rise.

Q: What's the difference between gross and net rental yield?

A: Gross rental yield uses rent alone; net rental yield subtracts the costs of owning the property. On a typical Australian investment property the gap is 1.5 to 2 percentage points — in the worked example above, a 3.8% gross yield becomes a 2.2% net yield once $12,000 of annual holding costs come out of $28,600 of rent. Agents and listings almost always quote gross, because it's the bigger number. If someone quotes a yield without specifying, assume gross and do the net sum yourself before you make a decision.

Q: Does rental yield include mortgage repayments?

A: No. Neither gross nor net rental yield includes loan repayments. Yield is a property metric — it lets you compare two properties on equal footing regardless of how each is financed. Two investors buying identical units get identical net yields even if one pays cash and the other borrows 90%. What repayments affect is cash flow, which is a separate calculation: net rental income minus annual loan repayments. That's why a property can have a healthy net yield and still cost you hundreds of dollars a week out of pocket — the home loan repayment calculator will give you the repayment side of that sum.

Q: Should I use the purchase price or the property's current value?

A: Use the purchase price when you're assessing a property you're about to buy, because it's the number that reflects the capital you're actually committing. Use current market value when you're reviewing a property you already own, since that tells you what return you're getting on the equity tied up in it today. The two can diverge a long way after a few years of growth — a property bought at 5% yield can be returning 3.5% on today's value while the rent has barely moved. Just be consistent: never compare a purchase-price yield against a current-value yield.

Q: How much do property managers charge in Australia?

A: Property management fees generally run 5–10% of gross rent collected across Australia, and Leadkit's calculator defaults to 7%. On top of the ongoing percentage, most agencies charge a letting fee of one to two weeks' rent each time they place a new tenant, plus administration, statement and lease renewal fees. Those extras aren't always obvious in the headline rate, so ask for the full schedule before you sign a management agreement. The difference between a 5% and a 10% fee is worth roughly 0.15 percentage points of net yield on a typical property.

Q: Do I need to allow for vacancy in my yield calculation?

A: Yes, and most quoted yields don't. Standard yield formulas assume 52 weeks of rent, which no property achieves indefinitely. Two weeks of vacancy a year reduces your gross rent by about 4% — enough to take a 3.8% gross yield down to roughly 3.65% before any expense is paid. A practical approach is to run the calculator on 50 weeks rather than 52 and treat that as your realistic case. In tight rental markets you may do better; in a market with high supply or a seasonal tenant pool, allow more.

Q: Is a rental yield calculator accurate enough to buy on?

A: It's accurate enough to shortlist and to reject, not to sign on. A yield calculator is only as good as the numbers you feed it, and two of those — expected rent and future maintenance — are estimates until a tenant signs and a few years pass. Use it to filter properties, to sanity-check an agent's yield claim, and to see how sensitive the result is when you change the rent or the management fee. Then confirm the deal with your broker, your accountant and, for a strata property, the strata report. This is a price indication only, not financial advice.

Run your numbers now

Rental yield is the fastest sanity check in property investing, and the gross figure everyone quotes is the least useful version of it. The number that matters is what's left after council rates, strata, insurance, maintenance and the managing agent's cut — and on typical Australian holding costs, that's 1.5 to 2 percentage points below the headline.

The fastest next step: browse the free investment property calculators — enter the price, the rent and your loan details in the yield calculator, and you'll get gross yield, net yield, weekly cash flow and the after-tax position in under a minute, built on current Australian rates.

If you'd rather have a specialist look at a specific deal, the rental yield enquiry form sends your property details through for a callback — no instant figure, but a real person on the other end. And if you're modelling the whole ownership cycle, the same library covers stamp duty, borrowing power, LMI, refinancing and the costs of selling.

All figures in this guide are indicative only and are drawn from the default assumptions configured in Leadkit's own investment property yield calculator — our tool, published transparently so you can check it against your own quotes. Nothing here is financial or tax advice. This is a price indication only. Your tradie will confirm the final price after assessing the job; for investment property figures, your broker or accountant will confirm the final figures after reviewing your circumstances.