Clients have been calling me worried about the May 2026 Budget changes to negative gearing.
I get it. It feels like a big deal. The headlines aren't helping.
So I did what I usually do when something this significant lands. I went and pulled the actual data from the last time the government tried this, in 1985. I wanted to see what really happened, not what the property industry says happened.
Here's the short version: investors didn't leave the market. They adapted. And inside two years, the rules were reversed and prices ran hard.
That's the story most people don't tell.
+42%
More money lent to property investors during the period the rules were changed.
26 months
How long the change lasted before the government backed down.
+24.7%
How much Adelaide house prices jumped in 1988, the year after the change was reversed.
The 1985 timeline, in plain English
How it actually played out.
July 1985
The Hawke government changes the negative gearing rules. Investors can still claim losses against their rental income. They just can't claim them against their
The Year We Removed the Safety Net
January 22, 2026
2026 marks my first year with no safety nets.
After more than a decade of side projects, false starts, and late nights, I’m officially all-in on Handle Properties.Anyone who knows me well has heard about the many ideas along the way: tech concepts, weekend ventures, businesses spun up with optimism and shut down quietly.
- Micro-lending in India.
- A funeral startup.
- A crypto venture or two.
Most didn’t work. All of them taught me something. Mostly, they built grit.While my attention was often on “the next big thing,” I was quietly investing in property on the side. Not to build a business. Not to post about it.Just because I loved the process and wanted to build something stable for my family.
With my partner in crime, Nikhil Sreedhar, we’d geek out on investing between startup ideas. Ironically, our property portfolios kept compounding while our ventures… didn’t.
What started as something we enjoyed doing became a side gig when friends and family asked for help.
That side gig turned into early mornings before work, late nights after, and weekends that disappeared fast.
It wasn’t glamorous.
It was demanding, stressful at times, and required showing up every single day.
No clever growth hacks.
No breakthrough idea.
Just three years of obsessing over doing the basics exceptionally well and putting clients first.
In 2025, we removed the final safety net and went all in.Now, heading into 2026, this is the first full year with complete focus.
This year, we’ll be:
- Serving ~4x more clients
- Growing our team ~3x
- Buying our own office-
Raising the bar again on client experience and outcomes
I’ll be sharing what the transition from corporate to full-time operator actually looks like including the pressure, the trade-offs, and the lessons as well as monthly updates on what we’re building behind the scenes.No hype.
Just the work.Onward.
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