BRRRR (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat)

BRRRR (buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat) is the hold-and-recycle cousin of flipping. You buy below value, renovate to lift the valuation, put a tenant in, then refinance against the new, higher value to pull most of your cash back out, and roll it into the next deal. In theory one deposit can control several properties over time.

The engine is the refinance. An Australian lender revalues the property on what it is worth today and generally lets you borrow up to 80% of that value before lenders mortgage insurance applies, so your usable equity is roughly the valuation times 0.80 minus what you still owe. If the renovation genuinely lifts the valuation, the gap between the new 80% loan and the old, smaller loan is the cash you recycle.

Why it is harder in Australia

BRRRR relies on the property paying for itself once tenanted, but Australian rental yields are low: national gross yields sat around 3.8% through 2026, with capital-city houses commonly closer to 3%. On an 80% loan the rent rarely covers the interest, so the property runs at a weekly cash loss. Serviceability is the binding constraint, because APRA requires lenders to assess you at your rate plus a 3 percentage point buffer, and from 1 February 2026 banks are limited in how much they can lend to borrowers whose total debt exceeds six times their income, which is exactly the ceiling a serial BRRRR investor reaches first.

Testing a BRRRR deal

Model the exit before you buy: a defensible after-repair value the lender will accept, whether 80% of that value actually returns your cash, and how deep the weekly holding-cost shortfall runs while you hold. The full walkthrough is in the BRRRR method in Australia, and the wider hold-versus-sell call is in buy-renovate-sell vs buy-and-hold.