Holiday Home Rental Deductions from 1 July 2026
Own a holiday home that you also rent out? From 1 July 2026, private use can have a greater impact on which property expenses are deductible.
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Helping an adult child buy their first home is becoming an increasingly common family financial decision.
The immediate question is often:
How much do they need?
But the more important question is:
What exactly are you trying to achieve?
Are you giving them money? Lending it? Providing support so they can obtain finance? Or are you genuinely buying part of the property with them?
Those options may all help get the purchase across the line, but they can leave the family in very different positions afterwards.
An outright gift can be simple, but the parents permanently give up control of the money. That needs to be considered against their own retirement needs, estate planning and assistance they may want to provide to other children.
A family loan may preserve the intention that the money remains part of the parents' wealth. But the terms matter. When is it repayable? What happens if the property is sold, the child separates from a partner or the parents die?
Lending support, such as a guarantee where appropriate, may solve the financing problem without making the parent an owner. But it creates different risks and may affect the parents' own assets and future borrowing capacity.
Genuine co-ownership may make sense where the parent actually intends to invest alongside the child. But putting a parent's name on title merely to solve an immediate lending problem can create unintended tax, estate planning and ownership consequences later.
The difficult situations often occur when the family's intention and the legal documents don't match.
A parent may appear on title while everyone regards the home as belonging entirely to the child.
Years later, when the property is sold or an estate is being administered, the family has to establish who actually owned the property.
Legal and beneficial ownership can differ in some circumstances, but that depends on the arrangement that was genuinely created and the evidence supporting it.
That is far easier to establish at the beginning than twenty years later.
There is no universal best way to help children into property.
Instead, start with the objective.
If the intention is generosity, a gift may be appropriate.
If the money is intended to remain a family asset, a properly considered loan may better reflect that intention.
If the issue is lender security, consider whether the lending problem can be solved without unnecessarily changing ownership.
If the parent genuinely wants an investment interest, co-ownership may accurately reflect the arrangement.
Decide the purpose first. Then decide the structure.
Before transferring money, signing a guarantee or adding another name to a property title, consider:
Helping children into property can be enormously valuable.
The key is not allowing the urgency of getting the purchase completed to determine a structure nobody has considered beyond settlement.
We can help you look at the lending, tax, cash-flow and longer-term financial implications together before the arrangement is locked in.
Talk to us before you structure the purchase.
General information only. Property ownership arrangements can involve tax, legal, lending and state or territory duty consequences. Appropriate professional advice should be obtained before implementation.
Tommy Li, CA
Director, Verity Advisory | Registered Tax Agent | Authorised Financial Adviser (ASIC Rep No. 1261831) | Member, Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand
Tommy is a Chartered Accountant with 20+ years advising medical professionals on tax, financial structure and practice ownership decisions. He founded Verity Advisory to provide integrated advice for doctors at career-defining financial inflection points — combining tax, lending and financial planning into a single structured approach.
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