What Are the Ongoing Costs of Owning a Prize Home?

Editorial note: General information only — not tax, legal, or financial advice. Rules change by draw and state; confirm on the operator's official terms before purchasing or accepting a prize. Last updated June 2026.

Winning a $3 million coastal home sounds like a life-changing moment — and it genuinely is. But here's what most people miss: the moment the keys land in your hand, a clock starts ticking on costs that don't pause for celebrations. Council rates, insurance premiums, body corporate levies, maintenance, and utilities can stack up to somewhere between $30,000 and $60,000 a year on a typical premium prize home. That's not a scare tactic. That's a real number you need to sit with before you tick the "I'll take the house" box.

We've broken down every major cost category below — with realistic figures drawn from comparable coastal Queensland and New South Wales properties — so you can make an informed call rather than an emotional one.

The Annual Cost Breakdown: What You're Actually Looking At

Let's anchor this to a realistic scenario. Say you've won a four-bedroom, three-bathroom prize home on the Sunshine Coast valued at $2.8 million. It's got a pool, a double garage, and sits 400 metres from the beach. Gorgeous. Here's roughly what it'll cost you to hold it each year.

Council Rates: $4,000 – $12,000+

Council rates are calculated on the unimproved land value, and in premium coastal councils — think Noosa, Byron, Gold Coast — that land value can be eye-watering. A beachside property in Noosa Shire might attract general rates plus separate charges for waste, water infrastructure, and environmental levies that push the total well past $10,000 annually. Inland prize homes in outer suburban areas will sit closer to the $4,000–$6,000 range, but the headline prize homes operators love to feature are almost always in high-rate council zones. Worth checking the specific council's rating schedule before you make any decisions — most publish their rate calculators online.

Building and Contents Insurance: $3,000 – $8,000+

Standard home insurance doesn't cut it at this price point. A $3M+ coastal home needs a policy that actually covers replacement cost — not market value, not a discounted rebuild estimate. Coastal properties also carry premium loadings for cyclone, flood, and storm surge risk, particularly anywhere north of Brisbane. Insurers like Insurance.com.au and the major underwriters will quote significantly higher for homes within 500 metres of the waterfront. Budget $5,000–$8,000 as a realistic midpoint for a premium coastal prize home, and don't be surprised if the first few quotes come in higher.

Body Corporate / Strata Levies: $5,000 – $15,000+

This one catches a lot of winners completely off guard. If the prize home is in a strata-titled complex — a beachfront apartment building, a gated estate, or a townhouse development — you're paying body corporate levies on top of everything else. Those levies cover building insurance for common areas, maintenance of shared facilities (pools, lifts, gardens), and contributions to a sinking fund for capital works. In a prestige Surfers Paradise or Broadbeach high-rise, annual levies can exceed $15,000. Even in a boutique four-unit complex, $5,000–$8,000 is common. The sinking fund component matters too — a building with deferred maintenance can hit owners with special levies that aren't budgeted anywhere.

Water, Power, and Internet: $3,000 – $6,000

If you're living in the home, utilities are just part of life. But if you're renting it out or leaving it vacant while you sort your finances, these costs don't disappear. Pool pumps, air conditioning systems, and smart home tech in modern prize homes draw meaningful power even on standby. Water rates in Queensland and NSW have a fixed access charge component regardless of usage, and many premium homes have irrigated gardens that add to consumption charges. Assume $3,000–$4,000 as a floor, and higher if the home has a large pool or extensive landscaping.

Pool, Garden, Pest Control, and Appliances: $3,000 – $10,000

The more impressive the home, the more it costs to maintain. A pool service at $120–$180 per visit, fortnightly, runs $3,000–$4,700 a year before you factor in chemical costs and equipment repairs. Garden maintenance on a large coastal block — the kind with statement landscaping that looks great in promotional photos — can run $200–$400 a fortnight. Add annual pest inspections ($300–$600), air conditioning servicing ($200–$500 per unit), and the occasional appliance replacement, and you're looking at $5,000–$10,000 as a realistic midpoint for a well-maintained premium home.

Property Management: 7–9% of Gross Rent + Letting Fees

Renting the prize home out is the obvious move for winners who don't want to sell but can't absorb the holding costs from their own income. A $2.8M coastal home might fetch $1,200–$1,800 per week in long-term rent, which sounds like it solves the problem. At 8% management fees on $1,500 per week, that's roughly $6,240 a year in management costs alone — before letting fees (typically 1–2 weeks' rent), maintenance call-outs, and vacancy periods. The numbers can work, but they rarely cover all your costs. We've explored this in more detail in our guide on renting out a prize home.

The Costs Winners Actually Forget

The table above covers the obvious stuff. What tends to blindside winners are the costs that don't appear in any promotional material and aren't discussed at the handover ceremony.

Land Tax

If the prize home isn't your principal place of residence — because you already own a home, or because you're renting it out as an investment — land tax kicks in. Every state has different thresholds and rates, but in Queensland and NSW, a $2.8M property with a land value of $1.2M–$1.8M could generate a land tax bill of $5,000–$20,000+ annually depending on your total landholding across the state. The ATO's property guidance is a good starting point, but you'll need state-specific advice — land tax is administered by state revenue offices, not the ATO.

The Furnishing Gap

Most prize home packages include furniture and styling — but "included" doesn't always mean "everything you need to live there". Promotional photos are styled for maximum visual impact, not practical daily living. Linen, kitchenware, outdoor furniture top-ups, additional storage, and the small stuff that makes a house a home can easily add $10,000–$30,000 in first-year costs if the package is light on inclusions. Read the prize schedule carefully.

Security and Monitoring Costs Pre-Occupancy

There's often a gap between winning and moving in — sometimes months, particularly if you need to sell your existing home or wait out a tenancy. A vacant premium coastal home is a target. Professional security monitoring, interim insurance riders for vacant properties, and even basic deterrents like timed lighting systems add costs that nobody budgets for in the excitement of winning.

Capital Works and Coastal Corrosion

This is the long-game cost that doesn't show up in year one but absolutely shows up in years three through ten. Coastal properties face accelerated wear from salt air — roof fixings, metal balustrades, window frames, and HVAC systems all degrade faster than their inland equivalents. A roof replacement on a 400sqm coastal home can run $40,000–$80,000. Lift maintenance in a strata building is a recurring capital cost. If the property is in a cyclone zone, post-event repairs can be substantial even with insurance, due to excesses and policy caps on specific items.

What Does Five Years of Ownership Actually Cost?

Here's a worked example that might make this more concrete. Assume you win a $3M Sunshine Coast home, you don't have a mortgage (prizes are unencumbered), but you're not moving in — you're renting it out and staying in your existing home in Brisbane.

Annual holding costs — council rates ($8,000), insurance ($6,500), utilities ($3,500), pool and garden ($6,000), property management on $1,400/week rent ($5,824 at 8%) — sit at roughly $29,824 before land tax. Add Queensland land tax on a $1.4M land value with no other landholdings: approximately $9,500 per year under the 2025–26 schedule published by the Queensland Revenue Office. Total annual cost: roughly $39,300.

Your rental income at $1,400/week is $72,800 gross. After management fees, that's about $67,000. Subtract $39,300 in holding costs, and you're netting around $27,700 before income tax. That's not nothing — but it's also not the passive income windfall people imagine. And it assumes full occupancy, no major maintenance events, and stable insurance premiums. None of those assumptions are guaranteed.

Over five years, you'd have paid out roughly $196,500 in holding costs. If the property grew at 5% annually (CoreLogic's long-run coastal Queensland average sits around 5–7%), it'd be worth approximately $3.83M — a gain of $830,000 on paper. That's a strong outcome. But if growth stalls, or you hit a capital works event in year three, the calculus shifts quickly.

Why Cash Alternatives Exist — and When They Make More Sense

Operators don't offer cash alternatives out of generosity. They offer them because experience has shown that a meaningful proportion of winners can't afford to keep the property. The cash amount is typically 60–80% of the stated property value — so on a $3M home, you might be looking at $1.8M–$2.4M cash. That discount is real, and it's worth quantifying against your five-year TCO (total cost of ownership) before you decide.

If your current income is under $120,000 a year and you don't have substantial liquid savings, the ongoing costs of owning a prize home will likely put you in a position where you're forced to sell within two to three years anyway — but after absorbing $60,000–$100,000 in holding costs. The cash option sidesteps all of that. We've looked at this trade-off in detail in our cash vs property prize guide.

So which winner profile actually keeps the house long-term? From the patterns we've observed across Australian draws, it tends to be winners who either move into the property as their primary residence (eliminating land tax and reducing insurance complexity), have existing investment income to absorb holding costs, or are in a financial position to treat the property as a genuine long-term investment rather than an immediate windfall. That's a narrower group than most ticket buyers imagine themselves to be.

The Body Corporate Question: Apartments vs Houses

One thing worth thinking about before you even buy a ticket: not all prize homes carry the same cost profile. A freestanding house on a 600sqm block in a coastal suburb has no body corporate, lower insurance complexity, and more predictable maintenance. An apartment in a prestige beachfront tower — the kind with a gym, pool, concierge, and underground parking — can have body corporate levies that alone exceed what you'd pay in total holding costs on a house.

Strata levies in Queensland and NSW are governed by state legislation — the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) sets out the framework for how levies are struck and how sinking funds must be managed. Understanding what's in the sinking fund, and whether the building has deferred capital works, is due diligence you should do before accepting an apartment prize. You can request a strata report through the body corporate manager — do it.

Making the Decision: A Practical Framework

Before you accept the property or elect the cash alternative, run through these questions honestly.

• Can you cover $30,000–$60,000 in annual holding costs from your existing income without financial stress?
• Will this be your primary residence? If not, have you modelled the land tax exposure?
• If you're renting it out, have you stress-tested the numbers at 80% occupancy rather than 100%?
• Have you read the prize schedule in full — specifically what's included in the furniture and styling package?
• Have you obtained independent legal advice on stamp duty obligations in your state? (Yes, prize home winners pay stamp duty in most states.)
• Do you have a cash buffer for year-one costs — furnishing gaps, security, insurance excess events?

If the honest answer to more than two of those questions is "no" or "not sure", the cash option probably deserves more serious consideration than it's getting.

Winning a prize home is genuinely extraordinary — we're not here to talk you out of it. But the cost of keeping a lottery house is real, it compounds over time, and it catches people off guard more often than it should. The winners who come out ahead are the ones who ran the numbers before they made the call, not after. Get a good accountant, talk to a financial adviser who understands property, and make the decision with clear eyes.

If you're still weighing your options, our guide on what happens after you win a prize home covers the full post-win process — from legal transfer to tax obligations — in one place.