Answers to common questions about the calculator, affordability grading, and paid suburb reports. Can't find what you need? Get in touch.
AffordaLive uses the 30% rule: if your housing cost exceeds 30% of your net income, the grade reflects that your housing is taking up a larger share of income than this indicative benchmark. This is a common guideline used by financial planners and lenders as a starting point, not a hard cutoff.
The 30% rule is a broad, one-size-fits-all guideline. It doesn't know your actual financial picture. If you have a high income, low debt, and substantial genuine leftover income despite grading above 30%, that grade may not reflect real financial stress in your specific situation. Use your own discretion, and if you're unsure, speak with a qualified financial adviser or mortgage broker who can assess your actual capacity, not just the percentage. AffordaLive's grading is a planning signal, not a verdict, and this isn't financial advice.
Our prefilled data comes from ABS Census and suburb benchmark data, upgraded to Domain listing data where available. For very specific or recent figures, switch to Advanced mode and enter your own numbers. If you think a suburb is significantly wrong, please let us know via the contact form so we can investigate.
The Australian Government's Home Guarantee Scheme allows eligible first home buyers to purchase a property with as little as a 5% deposit without paying Lender's Mortgage Insurance (LMI). Tick the First Home Buyer checkbox in the calculator to see your results with LMI waived. Check nhfic.gov.au for income and property price eligibility caps.
It's a genuine estimate, and a bit less precise than our other figures. Stamp duty is set by government and published on official rate tables, so we can calculate it exactly. LMI is different. It's a commercial insurance product priced by private insurers (mainly Helia and QBE), and the exact premium your lender quotes will depend on which insurer they use, your loan size, and their own arrangements. Two lenders can quote noticeably different LMI for the same property and deposit. We use a rate table built from published indicative pricing to give you a realistic planning figure, but treat it as a guide. Your mortgage broker or lender can give you an exact quote before you commit to a purchase.
From 1 August 2026, Queensland's home and first home concessions only apply to Australian citizens, permanent residents, or specified foreign retirees. Our stamp duty figures assume you're eligible on this basis. If you're a non-resident, temporary visa holder, or otherwise don't meet this requirement, your actual duty will be higher than what's shown (and Queensland's separate Additional Foreign Acquirer Duty may also apply). Check your eligibility directly with the Queensland Revenue Office or a conveyancer before relying on our figure.
Enter your net (take-home) income: the amount that lands in your bank account after tax and other deductions. If you and a partner are both earning, add both net amounts together for the combined household figure. You can use the ATO's tax calculator to convert gross to net.
Your financial profile, full analysis of your chosen suburb, an affordability score out of 100, deposit scenarios at 5/10/20%, a rent-vs-buy comparison, purchase price scenarios, interest rate stress testing, a hidden costs breakdown, and a step-by-step action plan, all for the one suburb you choose. Available as a Rent Report or Buy Report. See the full feature list for complete detail.
Everything in the Basic Lite Report, plus up to 3 suggested nearby alternatives, each scored the same way as your own pick, and a full suburb comparison table ranking every suburb in your report side by side. Available as a Rent Report or Buy Report. See the full feature list for complete detail.
Every suburb in a report is scored on two factors. Affordability, mortgage or rent as a percentage of your income, is the primary factor. Local pricing, how the suburb compares to the median for its council area (LGA) using real government-sourced sales data where it's available, is a secondary adjustment. Where a local council-area benchmark isn't yet available, this factor is instead scored relative to the other suburbs shown in your report, and this is disclosed on the suburb's page. A high score means a suburb is both comfortably affordable for you specifically and reasonably priced for its area. The two are scored separately on purpose, so a suburb that's well-priced for its area but still a stretch on your income shows both facts clearly rather than blending them into one number.
Most Australian suburbs don't have enough sales or rental volume to generate an independently reliable median price on their own. Suburb pricing on AffordaLive comes from a mix of direct government sales data, Domain's transaction records, and our own verified benchmarks. Where a suburb still doesn't have enough of its own data, we use the verified price from the nearest suburb with confirmed data rather than a broad state-wide average. A real neighbouring suburb's price is a far better estimate than a number covering an entire state. This is always disclosed directly on the suburb's page, with the source suburb and distance named.
Not yet. Comprehensive Lite, Comprehensive, and the subscription are all still in development. Basic and Basic Lite Reports are both live now. Get in touch if you'd like to be notified when Comprehensive or the subscription go live.
No. AffordaLive (the free calculator and all paid reports) is an indicative planning tool only. All figures are estimates based on publicly available data and standard assumptions. Always consult a qualified financial adviser, mortgage broker, or conveyancer before making any property decision. See our full disclaimer.
For the free calculator: no. All calculations happen in your browser and nothing is sent to our servers. For paid reports: the income, savings, and other details you enter are used to generate your report, then deleted once your report has been generated and emailed to you. Our payment processor, Stripe, only ever receives your email and payment details, never your income, savings, or other report inputs. We don't sell your data to third parties, and we don't run ads. See our privacy policy for full detail.