Three Things Investors Need to Stop Doing in 2026

(and the one thing to start while everyone else is frozen)

By Vanessa Dallas · Founder, Investor Haus · Also available as a podcast episode on The Intrepid Investor

If the only reason your investment property works is a $5,000 tax refund, I have news for you: it was never working. The budget didn't break your strategy. It exposed it.

Since May, I've watched more fear, more noise, and more bad advice flying around than at any point in the last decade. So here are the three things investors need to stop doing in 2026 and the one thing you should be doing instead.

First, a disclosure, because this entire article is about incentives. I'm a buyers agent. I get paid by buyers, on a flat fee. I make the same whether my client spends $600,000 or $900,000. I'm telling you that upfront because I want you holding me to the same standard I'm about to hold everyone else to: who's paying the person giving you advice, and what do they need you to believe?

1. Stop listening to the media, sales agents, and your peers

Stop outsourcing your thinking to people whose incentives don't match yours. Let's go through them one at a time.

The media first.

Right now, the headlines are telling you the budget “worked”. Prices are down in Melbourne. Prices are down in Sydney. Housing is more “affordable”.

Here's what they're not telling you: prices in those markets had been falling long before budget night. The media is taking a trend that already existed and reframing it as a policy victory, because that's the story that gets clicks.

But you don't invest off headlines. You invest off fundamentals, and the fundamentals of price are brutally simple: prices only fall sustainably when supply goes up or demand goes down. Is Australia building dramatically more homes right now? No. Has migration stopped? No. Nothing structural has changed. What we're in is a confidence dip, not a market repricing and confidence dips end.

| The media wants you to read falling prices as danger. An investor reads them as a discount. |

Hold that thought, because it's the whole of point three.

Sales agents next.

Nothing against them personally, but understand the mechanics. A sales agent is paid by the seller. Their legal duty is to the seller. Their job is to get the seller's stock sold at the highest price and right now they will happily borrow the media's fear headlines if it moves the property in front of them. That's not corruption. That's just the job. But it means their advice to you, the buyer, is marketing.

And yes, before anyone says it: I'm an agent too. The difference is who pays me and how. Flat fee, paid by the buyer, my only job is the buyer's outcome. My business survives on referrals if your property doesn't perform, I don't get your mates as clients. Judge every advisor, including me, by their incentives. That's the rule.

And finally, your peers.

Your family barbecue is full of property opinions. Here's my filter, and it sounds harsh but it will save you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Before you take advice from anyone, ask one question: are they standing where I want to be standing?

If your uncle has never bought an investment property, his opinion on your investment property is not advice. It's commentary. Take advice from people with results, take commentary as background noise, and never confuse the two.

That's number one: watch the incentives, not the headlines.

2. Stop buying new builds for the tax perks

This one is going to be controversial, because the tax system just changed to point you in exactly the wrong direction.

Let's be precise about what actually happened in the budget, because half the content online gets this wrong. Negative gearing is not dead. From July 2027, for established properties bought after budget night, you can no longer offset rental losses against your salary those losses get carried forward against future rental income or your capital gain when you sell. Deferred, not destroyed.

But here's the key bit: new builds keep full negative gearing. The whole toolkit. So every house and land marketer in the country is now running the same pitch “new builds are the only way to negative gear, buy new.”

Here's my response, and I want you to sit with it.

| The government is now paying you to buy the worse asset. The tax perk is the bait. |

Let me prove it with numbers. Take an investor on an average salary, buying around the $800,000 mark. The actual negative gearing benefit at that level, before depreciation, was roughly $5,000 a year. That's it. That's the thing everyone's mourning.

If $5,000 a year was the difference between you affording that property and not affording it, you were at the wrong price point. Full stop. Land tax rises, council rates, insurance, interest rate moves any one of those swallows five grand without asking your permission. A property that only works because of a tax refund doesn't work.

“But Vanessa, the depreciation schedule on a new build gives me $12,000 in year one.” Yes, it might. Now look at what's underneath the schedule. Where are these new builds? Development corridors on the outskirts, surrounded by vacant land. And what does vacant land next door mean? It means they keep building. Your competition never runs out. Supply is endless, so your scarcity never arrives and scarcity is the only thing that drives serious capital growth.

By the time that corridor finally fills in and demand catches up, the established property you could have bought closer in has already done its growing. You traded ten years of growth for a depreciation schedule. That's a terrible trade.

And here's the part nobody tells you about new builds: you pay a premium for the shine, and then all you can do is wait for the market to do the heavy lifting. With an established property in a good area, you buy at a lower price and you can manufacture growth yourself cosmetic renovation, paint, floors, kitchen, street appeal. You don't need to be a tradie; you hire people. And because you bought well in a growth area, in two or three years you can draw on the equity the market has created to fund the work rather than saving for it. You control the value. The new build owner controls nothing.

To be clear, I'm not talking about buying wrecks. Liveable properties, cosmetic work only, nothing structural due. If you know you'll never touch a tool, that stock still wins because you're buying the land value, not the shine.

So don't let the tax guide your investment strategy (unless you are a multi-millionaire and aren’t interested in real property growth). Buy the asset, not the deduction. Leave the cookie cutter new estates for the owner occupiers who plan to live there for twenty years.

3. Start buying while everyone else is frozen

Now we flip from what to stop doing to what to start doing.

Right now, across Australia, there are still standalone houses under $1 million, on blocks over 500 square metres, within 45 minutes of a capital city CBD. Read that sentence again, because in a few years it will sound made up.

The biggest concentration of them is in Victoria. And I can already hear it: “Vanessa, Victoria? The land tax state? The state landlords are fleeing?”

Yes. That state. Let me give it to you straight, because I'm not going to spin this.

Victoria's land tax is real. It stings, and with the gearing changes it stings more. Price it into your numbers before you buy, every single time. But understand that land tax is exactly why the discount exists. You are being paid to take a risk that other investors won't.

Markets don't hand you a house on 500 square metres, 45 minutes from Melbourne, under $1 million, unless something is scaring everyone else away. The fear is the price of entry. No fear, no discount.

I'm not going to tell you Melbourne is at the exact bottom. Nobody can call the bottom, and anyone who claims they can is selling something. What I can tell you is that Melbourne is deep in the low part of its cycle, and I don't need to pick the precise floor, because I'm buying assets that stack up at today's prices. If it drifts a bit lower before it turns, fine, zoom out five years and it won't matter. Sydney and Melbourne have led every national growth cycle in living memory, and in a few years they'll be on top again. The question is whether you're positioned before that happens or after.

But, and this is critical, not every cheap suburb is an opportunity. Some areas are cheap because they deserve to be. So here's the filter. Write it down.

| Follow the government's money. |

Government infrastructure spending today is population growth tomorrow, and population growth in established areas is price growth. Governments don't spend billions where they expect people to leave.

Real example: Geelong. Estimated population growth of around 175,000 people in the coming years, with over $1 billion of state and local government infrastructure investment committed. That is not a suburb hoping for a future. That is a future already funded.

So your checklist looks like this:

•  Standalone house, under $1 million

•  Over 500 square metres of land

•  Within 45 minutes of a CBD

•  In a corridor where government infrastructure money is already committed not promised, committed

•  Migration flowing in: overseas arrivals plus, in Victoria's case, locals moving back home

That filter separates the suburbs that ride the recovery from the ones that stay flat.

The window for this doesn't stay open. It closes the moment confidence comes back and confidence always comes back faster than people expect. The investors who buy during the fear own the recovery. The ones who wait for permission from the headlines buy at the top, from the people who read this article.

The recap

•  Stop listening to the media, sales agents, and people who aren't where you want to be. Watch the incentives, not the headlines.

•  Stop buying new builds for tax perks. The government is paying you to buy the worse asset, the tax perk is the bait. Buy the asset, not the deduction.

•  Start moving while everyone else is frozen. Sub-$1M houses on real land, close to major cities, in corridors where the government's money is already committed. The fear is the discount.

If this article challenged something you believed good. That's the job. Share it with the mate who's been sitting on pre-approval for six months waiting for the news to tell them it's safe.

Prefer to listen? This article is also an episode of The Intrepid Investor find it on Spotify. And if you want help applying this filter to your own budget and borrowing power, that's exactly what I do: fill out the form and let’s have a chat: investorhaus.com.au/apply

General information only not financial, legal or taxation advice, and prepared without considering your personal circumstances. Seek advice from licensed professionals before making investment decisions. © Investor Haus Pty Ltd