Just two weeks after the Albanese government announced plans to slash negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, prominent property advisory firm Dashdot has entered voluntary liquidation.
The national agency has sacked over 40 staff members, sparking panic among anxious clients who paid thousands in upfront fees for property sourcing and management.
Dashdot co-founder Goose McGrath told clients the business would enter voluntary liquidation on May 28 — in part because of the government’s changes to CGT and negative gearing.
In an open letter, Mr McGrath said Dashdot had helped more than 1800 Australian families buy more than 2800 properties and generate more than $540 million in wealth since launching seven years ago.
However, he said the tide had turned as the company grappled with weak consumer confidence, federal property tax changes, tighter lending conditions and a surge in the cost of acquiring clients through Meta advertising.
“I’m writing to inform you, with deep, deep sadness and regret, that this journey is coming to an end,” he wrote in the letter, published on Thursday.
“The incredibly unfortunate reality is that many people are going to be negatively impacted by this, and for those of you who are, I want to offer my most sincere, and most heartfelt apology.
“Truly, I am sorry. This is not an outcome that any of us wanted, expected, or accepted without a fight.”
He said that the company was doing well, even at the start of this year.
“As a company we were growing, profitable, and actively improving the client experience and client outcomes.
“We were, on all fronts, making great progress on impact, and innovation, and on almost every business metric that matters, Dashdot was in great shape.
“Unfortunately a sequence of events subsequently unfolded that caused that condition to become compromised.”
He said that consumer confidence had taken a hit in recent months.
“As a consumer centred business, which relies on everyday Australians feeling confident about their current situation, particularly to the extent that they think and plan for the future, general consumer sentiment has always heavily influenced Dashdot’s business dynamics,” he said.
“Coming into 2026, Australian households were already deep in a sustained cost-of-living crisis that had been building since 2022, and had not eased.”
However, the tide really started to turn in February 2026, he said.
“Three distinct forces converged on our business at the same time,” he said. “A macro shock to an Australian economy that was already under sustained pressure. A policy shock to the property investment market we served. A platform shock to our primary client acquisition channel.”
On the ‘macro shock’ front, he cited a number of statistics showing confidence in the economy had fallen. A big factor for Dashdot was increasing mortgage stress.
“Mortgage stress today is 35 per cent to 40 per cent worse than peak Covid, with no government support package this time around, and the RBA hiking rates rather than cutting them,” he said.
He also said real unemployment was rising and that 61.3 per cent of Australian businesses now expect ‘bad times’ for the economy over the next 12 months.
Budget blamed
Mr McGrath also blamed the budget this month for a part in the collapse.
“Its impact on our business, however, did not begin on 12 May,” he said. “From March 2026, media speculation about major changes to Australian property taxation had been building.
Industry commentary intensified week by week.
“Conflicting reports about what was coming, how aggressive the changes would be, and which investors would be caught, ran through the property press for weeks.
“By the time the budget itself was delivered, the property investment market had been absorbing sustained uncertainty for over two months, and the damage to investor sentiment was already well under way.”
He said the changes to CGT and negative gearing were hammerblows.
“For nearly thirty years, the architecture of Australian property investing had rested on two assumptions: that capital gains would be taxed at half the marginal rate, and that the cost of holding an investment property could be offset against salary income,” he said. “The May 12 budget removed both for future investors.
“Public commentary fractured immediately. Headlines warned of ‘the end of property investment.’ Forums filled with confused investors. The investor segment of the Australian property market entered a state of paralysis within 24 hours.
“This was the first direct, policy-driven blow to investor confidence in the entire cycle.
Every prior pressure had been macro. This one was aimed directly at the people we worked with.”
He said that, within days, the downstream impact arrived.
“On Friday 15 May, Westpac quietly told mortgage brokers not to count on future negative gearing when assessing investor serviceability,” he said.
“On Monday 18 May, Macquarie Bank formally issued the first complete policy. From that date, Macquarie’s investor lending calculator no longer included any add-back for the tax benefit of negative gearing on any post-budget purchase of an established property.
“The bank also began triggering mandatory reassessment of existing investor pre-approvals. CBA, NAB, and ANZ all moved to active review.
“For a typical investor (a single applicant on $100,000 income with no existing debt), borrowing capacity fell by approximately 20 per cent overnight, from $750,000 to $600,000, with no change to income, expenses, or interest rates. For more highly-leveraged scenarios, the reduction was 25 per cent to 33 per cent. Some pre-approvals issued only weeks earlier became unreliable overnight.
“New investor enquiry slowed. Existing client conversations shifted from ‘when do we buy’ to ‘what does this mean for me?’”
He said the third factor in the collapse was Meta’s new AI-driven ad system.
“In short: paid advertising on Meta became completely untenable and unviable, to the point that we could no longer continue running it,” he said. “Our primary source of new client acquisitions was effectively cut off, at the same time everything else was breaking.”