AffordaLive's calculator combines real-time property data with comprehensive financial analysis to help you understand your rent vs buy options.
Get an instant A–F grade based on the 30% housing affordability rule — the standard benchmark used by financial advisers and lenders.
Built on benchmark data from ABS Census, CoreLogic and Domain sources — covering rental and sale price estimates across all Australian suburbs.
See every dollar: rent, rates, insurance, HOA, maintenance, stamp duty, LMI, and ownership costs all calculated automatically.
Define personal goals (holidays, investments, education) and see exactly how rent vs buy impacts your savings.
Built-in support for stamp duty relief, Home Guarantee Scheme, and LMI waivers — see your real costs as a first buyer.
Enter your own custom figures for total control. Perfect if you want to test scenarios or use local knowledge.
AffordaLive uses the 30% rule, a widely accepted guideline from financial planners and lenders: if your housing cost exceeds 30% of your net (take-home) income, it's considered stretched.
When calculating rent affordability, we include:
When calculating mortgage affordability, we include:
Don't trust the default figures? Switch to Advanced mode and enter your own numbers for:
Perfect for testing "what-if" scenarios or when you have local knowledge of your suburb.
AffordaLive uses a combination of sources depending on what's available for your suburb:
Every data point is labelled with its source so you always know whether you're looking at live listings data, a suburb benchmark, or a state-level estimate. We never present estimated data as live market data.
The free calculator gives you a real-time affordability comparison for one suburb at a time. For a deeper, shareable analysis, AffordaLive generates a personalised PDF report — delivered to your inbox within minutes of payment.
Available as a Rent Report or a Buy Report, covering:
Every suburb in a report — your own picks and the recommended alternatives — gets a score out of 100, weighted two ways: affordability (60%), based on mortgage or rent as a percentage of your income, and value-for-money (40%), based on price relative to the surrounding regional benchmark. A higher score means a suburb is both comfortably affordable for your income and reasonably priced against similar nearby areas — not just cheap, and not just technically affordable.
Where a suburb's price is estimated from a nearby suburb with verified data rather than its own independent figures, this is disclosed directly on that suburb's page in the report, with the source suburb and distance named — never presented as equivalent to independently confirmed pricing.
A Premium tier ($34.99) and a monthly subscription for active buyers are in development — full suburb deep dives, financial readiness scoring, lifestyle fit analysis, investment cash flow projections, and extended stress testing. Not available for purchase yet. See our FAQs for the current status, or get in touch to be notified at launch.
All reports are generated automatically and delivered to your email within minutes of payment. Data is current at the time of generation — verify figures against live listings before making any decision.
AffordaLive — including both the free calculator and all paid reports — is an educational and planning tool only. All figures are estimates based on standard assumptions and publicly available data. Property prices, rental rates, and interest rates fluctuate.
Suburb recommendations in reports are based on affordability scoring relative to your income. They do not account for lifestyle preferences, employment location, school requirements, commute times, or other personal factors unless you use the Premium Report.
Always consult a qualified financial adviser, mortgage broker, or conveyancer before making any property decision. See our full disclaimer for details.