Before The Rules Change.

You are trying to buy a home to live in. You have been reading headlines about negative gearing and capital gains tax, and you cannot work out whether any of it applies to you.

Here is the short answer, and most of the coverage buried it.

The tax changes do not apply to your home. The main residence exemption is unchanged. Owner-occupiers never had negative gearing to lose.

But the market you are buying in changes - and it does not change the same way everywhere.

This is the part almost nobody has explained to first home buyers.

From 1 July 2027, investors lose negative gearing on established homes. But they keep it in full on eligible new builds, along with the choice between the old 50% CGT discount and the new regime - whichever produces the lower tax bill.

So investor demand does not disappear. It has somewhere to go, and that somewhere is the new apartment, the house-and-land package and the off-the-plan development. Which is exactly where a great many first home buyers are looking.

The reform plausibly works in your favour on established homes. On new builds, you may find yourself competing with investors who now have nowhere else to get those concessions. Nobody selling new stock has any reason to mention it.

• What actually changed, who is grandfathered, and what the 7:30pm 12 May 2026 test means
• Why the reform helps you more on established homes than on new builds
• What Treasury's modelling really says - 75,000 additional owner-occupiers, prices growing around 2 percentage points slower, rents up less than $2 a week
• What "2% slower" actually means, and why it is not a price fall
• Should you wait? The genuine case on both sides, without a verdict
• Your state's grants and stamp duty concessions - frequently worth more than the federal reform, and available now rather than projected
• The price cap trap that can cost you the whole concession
• What you can actually borrow, and what quietly reduces it
• If it has a body corporate: the records search that discloses the next special levy
• Three situations worked through, a full glossary and a buyer's checklist

What this book will not do is tell you whether to buy.

Not once. It does not know your deposit, your borrowing capacity or your circumstances. Every decision point ends by pointing you at a mortgage broker, a conveyancer, your state revenue office or your accountant.

Between now and mid-2027 the deadline will be used to sell you things. If someone is creating urgency in your purchase, ask them to name the rule that affects you. Frequently there is no answer.

Written by someone who read the body corporate minutes before buying his own apartment, found a $15,000 special levy nobody had mentioned, and negotiated the price down. The buyers who skipped that step paid it after settlement.

Information only. Not financial, tax, legal or property advice.