Free tool · Queensland · nothing saved, nothing sent
What share of your income does the rent take?
Leasing teams work this out in seconds, and it's often the first thing that decides whether they keep reading. Here's your number, what it's likely to signal, and what to do if it's higher than you'd like.
Several jobs? Add them all, then generate a one-page income summary to hand in with your application.
The advertised rent for the property.
Everyone who will be named on the lease. Add each person, and each of their jobs. Three casual jobs go in as three lines under the one person. The tool does the maths, including different pay cycles.
Not sure what counts as income?
Include wages and salary, regular Centrelink payments, pension, regular income from a business, and any other money that arrives reliably every week or fortnight.
Leave out one-off amounts, and anyone who will not be named on the lease. A partner who is not going on the lease is not part of the household income being assessed.
Not sure of the exact figure? A close estimate is fine. This is to orient you, not to fill in a form.
If you tell us it's before tax, we'll estimate the after-tax figure for you. That's the basis the main application platforms use.
Which one am I looking at?
After tax is what actually lands in your bank account each pay. If you are reading it off your banking app, that is after tax.
Before tax is the figure on your payslip as gross, or the salary in your contract.
If you genuinely are not sure, use what lands in your bank, and leave this on "After tax".
Choosing "Before tax" makes this tool estimate your take-home using current ATO resident tax rates plus the Medicare levy. It's an estimate only: it can't know about HELP or HECS debt, salary sacrifice, private health cover, or any offsets you're entitled to.
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left per week after rent
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left per month after rent
That's before food, power, transport, phone and everything else. It's the number worth thinking hardest about, more than the percentage.
Turn this into a one-page income summary
Multiple jobs are hard for someone to add up in ninety seconds. This puts every source on one page, with the totals already worked out, so an assessor can see your position at a glance instead of reconstructing it from five payslips.
You'll be asked for the name to print at the top of the sheet. No email is needed. It's a summary you prepare and sign yourself: it goes with your payslips, not instead of them. If you're self-employed, an accountant's letter carries more weight; the self-employed guide covers what it should say.
Fill in the rent and at least one income above, and this will unlock.
As it appears on your application. Add both names if you're applying together.
Leave it blank and the sheet still prints. Add it if you'd like a few short application tips by email. Your income figures aren't sent. The sheet is made on your device.
Opens your print view, then choose “Save as PDF” as the destination.
Haven't done the checklist yet?
The number on this page is one of two things an assessor looks at. The other is whether your documents are complete. Work through the free checklist →
Your income figures stay on your device
The calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your income isn't saved, isn't sent to us, and isn't sent anywhere else. Close the tab and it's gone.
If you go on to make the summary sheet below, we'll ask for your email so we can send you a few application tips, but the figures themselves are still never sent to us. The sheet is built on your device.
What this number actually is, and isn't
No Queensland law sets a rent-to-income limit. Not the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act, not the RTA, not the REIQ. There is no percentage you must be under to be allowed to rent, and no agent can point to a rule that says otherwise. Anyone who tells you "you have to be under 30%" is repeating a convention, not a regulation.
Where does 30% come from? American public housing. A 1969 US law capped subsidised rent at 25% of income; it was lifted to 30% in 1981 and has been quoted ever since. It was never a finding about what households can afford. It was a subsidy formula.
Australian housing researchers still use it, but more carefully. The measure taken seriously in the literature is the 30/40 indicator: a household is in housing stress if it's in the bottom 40% of incomes and spending more than 30% on housing. The income filter is doing real work there. It exists precisely because a high earner spending 35% is in a completely different position to someone on a low income spending the same share.
The honest caveat, from the researchers themselves
The peak Australian housing research body, AHURI, says ratio measures can "mask real housing affordability problems" for some households while "signalling housing affordability problems where they do not exist" for others, and that the indicator "is not an appropriate tool for designing housing programs to individual households."
Their own research also found that around 45% of households classified as being in housing stress described themselves as financially comfortable. The percentage is a rough signal, not a verdict on your life.
So why does it matter at all?
Because leasing teams use it. Not because it's rigorous, but because it's fast, and forty applications need sorting by Tuesday.
One thing worth knowing: Snug, one of the main application platforms, publishes its formula. It divides after-tax weekly household income by the weekly rent, treats roughly 20–50% as an acceptable range, and describes 30% as comfortable. It also says plainly that the property manager decides what's appropriate for their client and market, and warns the measure doesn't suit everyone: retirees, people between jobs, anyone with significant savings.
That's the closest thing to a documented industry benchmark that exists. Note it uses after-tax income, which is more generous than the researchers' gross-income version. It's why this tool asks you which one you're entering.
If your number is high
In Brisbane, rent now takes about 29% of the median renting household's income, up from 22% five years ago. Nationally the figure hit a record 33% of gross household income in early 2026. A high ratio is frequently the market, not the household.
That doesn't make it invisible to an assessor. But it does mean the useful response is evidence, not apology:
- Show savings. A balance, with transactions removed, answers the question the ratio raises.
- Show stability. A clean rental ledger over twelve months is worth more than a percentage point either way.
- Explain the shape of your income if it's unusual. An accountant's letter does in one page what a stack of statements can't.
- Consider who's on the lease. An additional leaseholder changes the household income being assessed. A written guarantee from someone not on the lease generally doesn't carry the same weight.
- Don't offer more rent to compensate. Rent bidding is prohibited in Queensland, and offering above the advertised price to fix a ratio problem is solving the wrong thing.
And if the numbers genuinely don't work
Sometimes the honest answer is that a property is out of reach, and knowing that before you spend a Saturday on inspections and an evening on an application is worth something. If rent is taking a share that leaves too little to live on, that's worth taking seriously for your own sake, not just your application's. The RTA has information on tenancy support, and free financial counselling is available nationally on 1800 007 007. No application technique overcomes rent that is genuinely unaffordable, and this site will never suggest otherwise. If you're on income support or a low income, Queensland's rental assistance programs (bond loan, rental grant, RentConnect) are the honest place to start.
Next: the week you sign
A rent you can carry week to week still lands with a lump on day one: bond, rent in advance, overlap, moving. Work out what you'll need on the day you sign →
About the tax estimate. Where you enter a before-tax figure, take-home pay is estimated using current ATO resident income tax rates plus the 2% Medicare levy, calculated for each person separately. It assumes Australian tax residency and that the tax-free threshold is claimed. It does not account for HECS or HELP debt, salary sacrifice, private health insurance, the Medicare levy surcharge, offsets, deductions, or any other adjustment particular to you, and your actual pay will differ. Tax rates change each income year. Check the current rates at ato.gov.au.
Sources. AHURI (30:40 indicator; Final Reports 105, 192 and 427); Productivity Commission, Vulnerable Private Renters (2019); SGS Economics & Planning / National Shelter Rental Affordability Index 2025 and Queensland RAI 2025; Cotality Rental Review Q1 2026; Residential Tenancies Authority (Qld); REIQ; Snug published rent-to-income guidance. Figures current as at September 2026.