Seven steps from deciding to invest to holding the keys, with the deposit sorted and the numbers stress-tested before you ever make an offer.
By the Chase Wealth Australia advisory team · 10 July 2026
Work out your usable equity
Most Australians who buy an investment property well do not start with a property. They start with a plan: a clear goal, a deposit sorted, the numbers stress-tested, and a market chosen on evidence rather than a hunch. This guide walks the whole journey in seven steps, from deciding to invest through to holding the keys and managing the asset. It is written for owner-occupiers weighing their first investment purchase, with the Queensland and Western Australian markets in mind.
The step where most first-time investors stall is the deposit, because saving one in cash can take years. If you already own a home, there is usually a faster path: the equity you have built can do the job a cash deposit does. We come to that in step two, and every figure here is shown and dated so you can check the working.
Before you look at a single listing, decide what the property is for. Two goals pull in different directions. If you are investing for capital growth, you are buying an asset you expect to rise in value over ten years or more, and you accept that the rent may not cover every cost along the way. If you are investing for cashflow, you want the rent to meet or beat the holding costs from day one, and you accept slower growth in return.
Most first properties lean toward growth, because time in a rising market does the heavy lifting, but the right answer depends on your income, your timeframe and how much you can comfortably contribute each month. Write the goal down. It becomes the test every later decision has to pass: a property that does not serve the goal is the wrong property, however good the photos look.
Two numbers decide what you can buy: how much a lender will lend you, and how much deposit you can put toward the purchase. Borrowing capacity comes down to serviceability, your income measured against your existing commitments, and lenders assess it at your actual rate plus a buffer (APRA requires them to test you three percentage points above the loan rate). That buffer is the real gate in 2026, so it is worth knowing your number before you fall for a property.
On the deposit, the working rule is a 10 to 20 per cent deposit plus roughly 5 per cent of the price in costs. Our companion guide on how much deposit you need for an investment property breaks those bands down in full.
Here is where owning a home changes the game: you may not need to save a cash deposit at all. Usable equity, the portion of your home’s value a lender will release, can serve as the deposit and costs on the new property. To see your own figure, run your property value and loan balance through the Equity Unlock Calculator, and the complete guide to using equity to buy an investment property shows how the release is structured. The short version: your home loan increases by the amount you draw, the investment property carries its own loan, and rental income helps carry the combined repayments.
The deposit gets the attention, but the costs line is where first-time buyers get caught short. Budget about 5 per cent of the purchase price for the costs of buying, and know that stamp duty is the largest single item. Investors pay the full rate with no owner-occupier concession in either state: $20,025 on a $600,000 purchase in Queensland, and $24,890 on a $650,000 purchase in Western Australia (state revenue office scales, 2026). On top of duty come legal or conveyancing fees, building and pest inspections, loan establishment costs and, if you go above an 80 per cent lending limit, lenders mortgage insurance.
Then budget for holding the property, not just buying it. Rates, insurance, property management, maintenance and any gap between the rent and the repayments all land after settlement. A cash buffer of six to twelve months of expenses behind the purchase is what turns a good buy into one you can hold through a flat patch or a rate rise.
Your goal from step one now becomes a strategy. A growth-focused investor buys in areas with the population pressure and supply constraints that drive values up over time, and manages the shortfall between rent and costs in the early years. A cashflow-focused investor prioritises yield, often further from the capitals, and trades some growth for a property that pays its own way sooner.
There is a third approach worth knowing, especially if you live somewhere expensive: rentvesting. You rent the home you want to live in and invest where the numbers actually work, which frees you to buy in a growth market you could not afford to live in. Our guide to what rentvesting is and how it works covers the trade-offs. For many first-time investors in Sydney or Melbourne, rentvesting into Queensland or Western Australia is what makes the first purchase possible at all.
With a strategy set, pick the market on evidence. The signals that matter are population growth, rental vacancy, new-supply constraints, and the relationship between entry price and yield. This is where Chase Wealth concentrates, and the reasons are in the numbers rather than the brochure.
Brisbane’s median dwelling value rose 19.1 per cent in the year to May 2026 while rental vacancy sat at just 0.9 per cent and rents rose 6.6 per cent (Cotality, May 2026), so tenants compete for stock and holding costs stay covered. Perth’s median rose 25.8 per cent over the same year, and houses were leasing in around 16 days (Cotality, May 2026; REIWA, mid-2026). Both cities still carry growth corridors with entry prices a southern-state homeowner’s equity can reach: Ipswich suburbs such as Leichhardt and One Mile sit under $700,000, and Perth entry suburbs such as Armadale had a $630,000 median (REIWA, year to June 2026).
Once you have a city, the suburb and the specific property decide the outcome. Our Brisbane property investment and Perth property investment pages set out how we read each market, corridor by corridor.
How you structure the finance matters as much as which property you buy, and it is the step most first-time investors underrate. The rule that protects you: keep each property on its own standalone loan, secured only against itself. The structure to refuse is cross-collateralisation, where one lender holds both your home and the new property as security for both loans. It quietly hands the bank control of your options, blocking future equity releases and tangling any later sale. The complete equity guide sets out the four ways to structure an equity release and why the standalone split is the clean default.
Rates are part of the picture too. Investor loans price higher than owner-occupier loans (the average investor variable rate was 7.20 per cent in July 2026, with sharper rates from about 5.99 per cent, Finder loan database, 3 July 2026), and the interest on an investment loan is generally deductible against the property’s income. Getting the valuation and the loan structure right at the start is where good advice saves the most money and the most time.
Now you buy. Make your offer with your finance pre-approved and your buffer confirmed, negotiate on evidence from comparable sales, and make the contract subject to a satisfactory building and pest inspection and to finance. Once the contract is signed and finance is formally approved, settlement follows in a matter of weeks (the period is set by the contract) while your conveyancer handles the legal transfer.
After settlement the job shifts from buying to holding. A good property manager keeps the property tenanted and compliant, your buffer absorbs the bumps, and the asset compounds in value over the years you hold it. That long hold is the whole point: both your home and your investment property grow together, and the equity that opened the door keeps building behind you for the next purchase.
Put the seven steps together with real figures. Take a homeowner with a property worth $800,000 and a $500,000 loan. The Equity Unlock Calculator puts their usable equity at $140,000, which is enough to cover the deposit and buying costs on an investment property in the $550,000 to $700,000 range.
That range lands them squarely in the South East Queensland growth corridor. At the conservative end, a 20 per cent deposit on a $550,000 property with costs cleared; at the stretch end, a 10 per cent deposit (with lenders mortgage insurance) on a $700,000 purchase, which reaches Ipswich entry suburbs like Leichhardt and One Mile. No cash deposit saved, no home sold: the equity already built did the work, and the new property starts compounding from settlement. A strategy session is where numbers like these get tested against your income and a specific corridor.
Enter your property value and loan balance to see your usable equity and the price range it could fund.
Open the Equity Unlock CalculatorA strategy session tests your borrowing and equity position against real Brisbane and Perth corridors, and shows you what your first move could look like. Bring your numbers and we will pressure-test them against live lending conditions.
Book a strategy session
The Chase Wealth Australia advisory team are property investment strategy specialists who help homeowners turn the equity in their home into an investment property. Their focus is equity-led portfolio building for investors across Queensland and Western Australia, backed by in-house suburb research across the Brisbane and Perth growth corridors. The advice is independent of banks and developers: no lender sets the structure and no developer supplies the stock, so both the numbers and the shortlist answer to the client alone. Read about the firm.
This guide is general information, not personal financial advice. A strategy session is where these steps become a plan built around your own numbers.
