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A couple of months ago, Alyssa Shaw moved from Melbourne’s south to its north-west. It was her 25th move in 15 years.

“I’ve been working since I was 14 [and] it’s really disappointing that I’ve contributed a lot and I don’t have the stability my parents had and that I thought would have by this age,” the 36-year-old says.

“I started renting at about 21. I stopped counting a little while ago but … I did the calculation once and it was averaging [moving house] every nine months,”

Shaw says the Albanese government’s changes to property tax concessions are “meaningful” for some, but they won’t help renters like her who aren’t anywhere near being able to afford to buy a home.

Designed to help people enter the housing market, the tax reforms outlined in Tuesday’s federal budget mean that, with a few exceptions, investment properties bought after 7.30pm on budget night will no longer benefit from negative gearing from 1 July 2027, at which time the 50% capital gains tax (CGT) discount will also be replaced.

But what will the changes, which are only estimated to slow the growth of property prices by 2% over the next couple of years, do for “forever renters” like Shaw, for whom saving for a deposit still feels insurmountable?

The Albanese government expects its reforms to CGT and negative gearing will lower investor demand for housing and help an extra 75,000 Australians into home ownership over the coming decade and even more first home buyers after that.

While Labor’s changes have been grand fathered in and won’t apply to properties bought before 12 May 2026, Treasury expects the benefits of negative gearing for existing investors to wash out after about 10 years.

Treasury modelling shows the effect on rents is estimated to be minimal: an extra $2 a week for a household paying the median rent.

Shaw, who says she would struggle to save enough as a single person to buy a property and service a mortgage despite working-full time, believes housing inequity is affecting the “health and hope” of young and working-class people.

“All governments could start … by prioritising rental caps,” she says. “I worked out my rent had gone up about 44% in five years. My income hasn’t gone up 44% in five years.

Swinburne housing expert Prof Wendy Stone says the budget takes “some bold first steps” towards changing the structural conditions that have driven property-related housing inequality in Australia.

“For people who are likely to be long-term renters this budget doesn’t necessarily change that picture,” Stone says.

The Coalition has vowed to repeal Labor’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax if they win government, while the Greens say the reforms entrench existing housing inequality by locking in tax breaks for multi-property owners.

As someone who has lived in rentals her entire life, Koushalya Pereiaslov, thinks the Albanese government’s changes to tax concessions for investment property owners are “great”, but they won’t do much for her.

Pereiaslov, who relocated to the northern rivers in New South Wales after being priced out of the Gold Coast, has moved on average once a year while imagining what it would be like to own her own home.

“To be honest it’s been my dream since I was probably three years old,” says Pereiaslov, now 26 and living in a rented share house.

“I’m a child of a single mum … we’ve been buying lotto tickets with my grandma since I was three and dreaming, ‘Oh this is what [the house] would be like’.”

Pereiaslov says for people in a “lower economic demographic” like herself, the dream of home ownership still feels unattainable.

Pereiaslov, a support worker at an employment and training service for National Disability Insurance Scheme participants, says she is spending up to half her pay on rent and so saving for a deposit is impossible “when life is so expensive”.

Through a classmate at Tafe, Pereiaslov says she knows single mothers in the area who have been forced to move because they can’t afford rent, let alone a mortgage.

“I always feel that some one else is kind of writing my story for me and I’m not in control of where I want to be and how I want to get there.”