ATO figures: more than half of landlords now report a rental loss

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More than half of Australia's individual landlords made a loss on their rental property in the 2023-24 income year, according to the Taxation statistics the Australian Taxation Office published on 17 June 2026. Of the 2,335,540 people who declared an interest in a rental property, 1,266,454 reported a net rent loss. A year earlier the loss-makers were just under half.

The release is the ATO's annual count of what Australians put on their tax returns, and it arrives in the month Parliament is deciding whether to restrict the tax treatment of exactly those losses. A Senate committee is due to report by 22 June on the bill that would limit negative gearing to new homes from 1 July 2027.

The figures are national. The ATO's published summary for individuals does not split rental interests by state, so there is no Queensland line to quote. What the tables do show is who property investors are, how many properties they hold and how the balance between profit and loss has shifted, and each of those bears directly on Queensland, where rental yields in the capital sit below the cost of borrowing.

ATO, Taxation statistics 2023-24, individuals statistics, published 17 June 2026. Shares calculated from the ATO's counts.

From just under half to clearly over half

The ATO's table compares two income years. In 2022-23, 2,261,080 individuals had an interest in a rental property, and 1,117,175 of them reported a net rent loss. That is 49.4 per cent. The remaining 1,143,905 broke even or made a profit.

In 2023-24 the number of people with a rental interest rose by 74,460, or 3.3 per cent, to 2,335,540. The number reporting a loss rose much faster, by 149,279 or 13.4 per cent, to 1,266,454. The number at break-even or in profit fell by 74,819, to 1,069,086. Loss-makers became 54.2 per cent of the total.

Put another way, the investor population grew a little and the group making a loss grew four times as quickly. The ATO's summary also gives the size of the typical result. Across the 2,332,653 individuals who reported a net rent figure, the average was a loss of $1,148 and the median a loss of $934. A median below zero says the same thing as the head count: the person in the middle of the range lost money on rent for the year.

Those are modest sums beside the price of a property. They are averages across everyone, including long-term owners with little debt and strong rents, so they understate the losses of recent buyers with large loans. The ATO's summary does not publish that distribution.

To place landlords in the wider population, the same release counts 16,584,287 individuals who lodged a return for 2023-24. People with a rental interest are about 14 per cent of them, or roughly one lodger in seven.

Most investors hold a single property

The second table is the one that most often surprises readers. It counts individuals by the number of rental properties in which they hold an interest.

Nine investors in ten hold an interest in one or two properties: the two groups together come to 2,111,522 people, or 90.4 per cent of the total. Those with three or more number 224,018, which is 9.6 per cent. The largest holders, with six or more, are fewer than one in a hundred. Between those ends, the 438,906 people with two properties are 18.8 per cent of the total, and the 135,327 with three are 5.8 per cent.

The word "interest" matters. A couple who own one rental unit together appear as two individuals, each with an interest in one property. The table counts people, not dwellings, and it does not count property held through companies or superannuation funds. It is a picture of household investors, and it shows that the typical one has a single rental.

What a net rent loss means on a tax return

A net rent loss is what is left when the deductible costs of a rental property exceed the rent it earned in the year. The ATO's guidance for rental property owners sorts those costs into ones that can be claimed in the year they are paid, such as loan interest, council rates and repairs, and ones that are spread over several years, such as the cost of construction and of assets like appliances and carpets.

Two things follow. First, interest is usually the largest cost for an owner with a loan, so the number of loss-makers tends to rise when borrowing costs rise faster than rents. The ATO's figures do not say why the share increased in 2023-24, and this article does not attribute it to a single cause. Second, part of a paper loss can come from deductions that involve no cash leaving the owner's account in that year, which is why some properties show a tax loss while covering their own running costs.

Under the rules that apply to the 2023-24 returns in these tables, a net rent loss is set against the owner's other income, such as salary. That is what the term negative gearing describes.

Why the count matters to the bill before the Senate

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Bill 2026 would change that treatment for some properties. As the Budget papers describe it, from 1 July 2027 negative gearing would be limited to new builds, existing properties held before Budget night would be unaffected, and losses on established properties bought after that point could be deducted only against rental income, with unused losses carried forward.

Read against the ATO's tables, the design of the bill becomes clearer. The 1,266,454 people who reported a loss in 2023-24 already owned their properties, so the exemption for homes held on 12 May 2026 would cover them for as long as they keep those properties. The people the bill reaches are future buyers of established homes whose rent does not cover their costs.

The tables also explain why the debate is so widely felt. A measure that touches the tax position of a group of 2.34 million people, most of whom own one property, is not a measure about a small number of large portfolios. That is a description of the numbers, not a view on the policy.

Reading the figures from Queensland

Without a state split, the Queensland picture has to be assembled from other sources. Cotality's home value index for May, published on 1 June, put the gross rental yield at 3.3 per cent for Greater Brisbane dwellings, with houses at 3.1 per cent and units at 3.9 per cent, and at 4.1 per cent for regional Queensland. The Reserve Bank held its cash rate at 4.35 per cent on 16 June.

A gross yield is annual rent divided by the value of the property, before costs. When that figure sits below the interest rate on the loan, a buyer who borrows most of the price will pay more in interest than the property earns in rent, before any other expense. On Cotality's numbers that describes a house bought at today's values in Brisbane with a large loan. It does not describe an owner who bought years ago at a lower price and has paid the loan down, which is one reason the national tables still show 1,069,086 people at break-even or better. Units, at 3.9 per cent, and regional homes, at 4.1 per cent, sit closer to the point where rent covers interest, although every property also carries rates, insurance and upkeep.

There are early signs of how investors in the state are responding to the prospect of change. Mortgage Professional Australia reported on 12 May that investors made 22 per cent of offers on listings handled by the south-east Queensland agency Image Property in the first four months of 2026, down from 28 per cent in the second half of 2025, across more than 5,000 offers. That is one agency's data, not a market-wide measure.

What these statistics cannot show

The release describes returns for the year that ended on 30 June 2024. It is nearly two years old on the day it is published, and it says nothing about behaviour since the Budget.

It also measures tax outcomes, not investment returns. A property can record a rental loss every year and still leave its owner better off if its value rises, and the ATO's capital gains tables are a separate part of the same release. Nor does a profit on the tax return mean a property was a good investment once the capital tied up in it is counted.

The next step in Canberra is the Senate committee's report, due by 22 June. The next edition of these statistics, covering 2024-25, would be expected in about a year, and it will describe the last full income year before the Budget announcement changed the question investors were asking.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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