One take on what the website Macrobusiness likes to style the population ponzi gets a work out in a new report from CoreLogic; "Profile of the Australian Residential Property Investor.""While investors have generally derived strong capital gains from their properties over recent years, growth in rental income has been comparatively soft," CoreLogic observe."Across the combined capital cities, weekly rents were 0.2 per cent lower over the 12 months to April 2016 whilst gross rental yields have been on a downwards trajectory since mid-2013, when growth in dwelling values started to outpace growth in rental rates."CoreLogic relate the data on capital gains tax, branding it "an important facet of investment in Australia."Investors lost A$3.4 billion on dwelling resales over the 2015 calendar year but showed a gross profit of $51.2 billion, "highlighting considerably more capital gains tax revenue was collected by the Government than deducted," CoreLogic said.The system may be stable, for now, "with interest rates the lowest they've been since 1968, low rental yields are largely being offset by the low cost of debt," the report points out.Rental yields are compressing due to the fact that rental growth is generally weaker than the pace of capital gain, the report explains."Over the past four years, capital city dwelling values have increased by 32.5 per cent compared with a 7.3 per cent rise in weekly rental rates. "The effect of substantially higher capital gains compared with rental inflation has been a consistent compression of rental yields. ?"Gross rental yields in Melbourne and Sydney are substantially lower than other capital cities due the high rate of capital gains that has been evident in these cities over the past two growth cycles."Lower mortgage rates are currently offsetting the burden of low rental yields, CoreLogic said, however "the spread between the average standard variable mortgage rate and gross rental yields has been pushing slightly higher since September last year."When mortgage rates eventually start to rise, "investors will be facing a scenario of higher holding costs and there is likely to be renewed focus on recovering these higher costs via rental increases. "If residential property investors are unable to implement higher rents, we can expect to see a rise in net rental losses."The ABS in March 2016 put investors at 40 per cent of housing finance commitments for new housing stock (including construction of dwellings and purchase of new)."Over the long-run investors have accounted for 23.9 per cent of the value of all housing finance commitments for new housing stock, with investment activity in this sector accelerating over the past four years," CoreLogic said.