Housing · the cost of buying
Rent vs buy
Why this matters. Renting and buying are different cash flows. Stamp duty is paid once, from the state table. The weekly comparison is not a forecast of the house price.
You can afford the house. The question is what you give up: stamp duty, land tax, lenders’ insurance (often waived for doctors), and tax if you later sell. Compared with leaving the same cash in shares.
Cash to get in vs years of optionality
- Stamp duty
- $50,135
- LMI
- Waived
- Deposit
- $240,000
- Cash to settle
- $290,135
- Land tax / year (sketch)
- $0
- Duty as years of 8.5%
- 2.3 y
Buy · equity after 10y
$1,608,239
Sale $1,776,293. Loan left $0. CGT $123,647.
Rent · same cash in shares
$5,705Duty tables on this page
Rent paid $447,091. 8.5% on the cash you didn’t settle with.
Gap (buy equity − rent portfolio): $1,602,533. Stamp duty is 4.2% of price — paid once, gone. Confirm duty and land tax with the state revenue office.
Next: What a house costs to hold — Land tax on site value and the weekly hold cost.
What doctors often miss
Stamp duty comes from the state table and is paid once. It is not part of the weekly rent.
Included / Not included
Included
- Stamp duty from the state table on this site, and the rent, price, and rate you type · Duty tables are linked on the page
Not included
- Land tax, unless this page shows it
- Council rates, insurance, and maintenance you did not type
- Capital growth as a promise. It is an assumption if a field exists
- Your tax bracket, unless the page runs the tax tool
- Negative gearing cash flow beyond the fields shown
- Brokerage and inflation
Assumptions you can edit are the inputs on this page. This is a model, not a prediction, a tax assessment, or a recommendation.
A rough figure — not advice. Terms
Also
Advertisement — labelled, never inside the number.