Every Year or Every Three Years? How Often SMSF Property Must Be Valued

William Spark, Founder & Director

2025 SMSF Adviser Awards, Newcomer of the Year Winner · About

Does an SMSF Property Need to Be Valued Every Year or Every 3 Years?

The distinction in that answer matters, because getting it wrong in either direction causes problems. Overclaim and you will be corrected by your accountant. Underclaim and you risk an audit query. This article sets out the precise position, with the regulator’s own words linked so you can verify each step.

What the Law Actually Says

Regulation 8.02B of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Regulations requires the assets of a self-managed super fund to be valued at market value every time the fund prepares its accounts and statements. Funds prepare accounts every year, so every property in every SMSF carries a fresh 30 June market value, every year, without exception. That part is not negotiable and never has been.

What the law does not say is just as important. It does not prescribe who must produce the valuation, and it does not mandate a brand-new external valuation report every twelve months. The ATO’s Guide to valuing SMSF assets permits reliance on an earlier valuation where it remains supported by current, objective and supportable data. The obligation that renews annually is the reported value and the evidence behind it, not necessarily the document.

Where the Three-Year Idea Came From, and Why It Died

For years, a widely repeated rule of thumb held that a full valuation every three years was enough, with trustee updates in between. It was always a convention rather than law. The ATO put it to rest explicitly: in March 2025 it named “only obtaining a valuation every three years” as an outdated practice, and said its auditor review program would continue.

The enforcement behind that statement was already under way. In March 2024 the ATO contacted approximately 16,500 SMSFs that had reported certain asset classes, including residential and commercial property, at the same value for at least three income years. It also reviewed more than 1,000 associated auditors who had signed those funds off without lodging contravention reports. A property that shows the same value three years running is now, quite literally, a flag in the ATO’s data.

The Honest Position for Trustees

So can you rely on last year’s report? Sometimes, in a flat market, with an auditor who is satisfied nothing material has changed. The ATO’s own triggers are whether the value has “changed significantly” or become “materially inaccurate”. The practical difficulty is proving a negative: demonstrating to your auditor that the market has not moved usually requires exactly the kind of current comparable sales evidence a fresh report would contain. In a moving market, evidence that is a year old is evidence an auditor cannot comfortably rely on.

That is why most accountants and auditors have settled on annual refreshes as standard practice, and why an affordable desktop report exists as a product category at all. At $299 + GST for residential and $425 + GST for commercial, refreshing the evidence each 30 June costs a fraction of the accounting time spent arguing about a stale figure, let alone the cost of an auditor contravention report if the argument is lost.

Events That Force a Revaluation Regardless

Between annual reports, some events make the recorded value materially inaccurate on their own: renovations, extensions or other improvements; damage or demolition; rezoning; a significant movement in the local market; a change in use, such as a commercial property gaining or losing a tenant. Any of these means the next set of accounts needs a value that reflects the change, whatever the date on the last report. Our complete guide covers the full evidence standard, and retrospective valuations handle the case where the reporting date has already passed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated 4 August 2026. General information about valuation evidence, not financial or tax advice. Speak to your accountant or adviser about your fund.