Almost one in two federal politicians own an investment property, according to an analysis of their registers of interests.

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The publicly available forms show that at least 97 federal members and senators, or their partners, own an investment property.

A handful own more than 10, while 50 MPs own more than two investment properties.

But as all sides of politics debate the merits of negative gearing - how many federal politicians are negative gearing their own investment properties?

It was an episode of the ABC's Kitchen Cabinet that prompted Melbourne-based Jan Dods to ask Curious Canberra how many federal politicians negatively geared property in Canberra.

"It's something I hadn't thought about but I was watching an episode of Annabel Crabb's Kitchen Cabinet where she was having lunch with Joe Hockey," she said.

"It came up that he rented rooms in his house [in Canberra] to other people.

"And I know Joe Hockey's family doesn't live in Canberra, so I thought, that's strange, he owns another house in Canberra and he's renting out rooms."

Jan began wondering how many politicians have investment properties - and whether that might influence their thinking on negative gearing.

"It came on that they need to save money with budgeting and things, and I thought, why don't they attack negative gearing?" she asked.

Finding the answer online – well, most of it

Every politician has to list their real estate portfolio and the purpose for which it is owned. ( Flickr: Francisco Martins )

We have attempted to answer Jan's question as part of the Curious Canberra project.

But we have taken it a step further, trying to find out how many politicians negatively gear investment properties across the country.

The answer partly lies in the Register of Interests lodged by every federal parliamentarian, in the House of Representatives and the Senate all of which are available online.

Every politician has to list their real estate portfolio, and the purpose for which it is owned (residential, investment, commercial etc).

Data was collated from each politician, regarding how many properties they own with a listed purpose of "investment."

Going through the 225 documents was not a task we took on alone.

Nine people from across Canberra joined us for a fact-finding workshop at the National Film and Sound Archive, helping us search through thousands of pages of documents.

They scoured the register of interests for every member of the House of Representatives and Senate (except Joe Bullock, who has retired, and Pat Dodson, who was yet to be confirmed).

Documents were checked and double-checked, listing not only what real estate was initially declared – but the notifications of changes, in case property was bought or sold during an MP's term.

Federal MPs building property portfolios

The answer - 97 politicians and their spouses, from both houses and a range of parties, own a total of 215 investment properties.

That figure only includes those properties listed specifically as investments, and does not include commercial properties, holiday houses, or secondary properties in Canberra.

It also does not include Fairfax MP Clive Palmer, who owns a range of investment properties that cannot be accurately collated.

But how many are negatively geared?

The next step was to attempt to find out which of those 97 politicians were negatively gearing their investment properties.

The first approach was to directly contact MPs via email, to ask if their properties were negatively geared.

Seven responded saying yes - that at least one of their investment properties are negatively geared.

Seven MPs, all from the Coalition, gave a standard response stating that all information has been disclosed in their register of interests.

Eighteen MPs said that none of their investment properties are negatively geared, while 65 did not respond at all.

Aside from investment properties, the registers of interests reveal 49 MPs own residential properties within the ACT (excluding those members that represent ACT electorates).

According to the Department of Finance, all MPs are entitled to claim a travel allowance for time spent in the ACT for official duties, even if living in a property they own.

ATO data fills in some of the blanks

While our data is a long way from conclusive in assessing exactly how many MPs are negatively gearing properties, new research from the Australian National University (ANU) can provide a clearer answer.

The ANU assessed Australian Tax Office (ATO) data to try and determine who is using negative gearing tax breaks - including breaking the data down by occupation.

ANU Associate Professor Ben Phillips has been using tax data to see who has been using negative gearing. ( ABC News: Ian Cutmore )

Of those who identified as "legislators", 13.87 per cent were negatively gearing properties.

Associate Professor Ben Phillips said he would expect negative gearing to be a little more common than that within federal parliament.

"Generally the federal politicians are the most highly paid politicians within Australia, so I would expect they'd be a little bit higher up the chain than your average legislator," he said.

"Given that local MPs - which would make up many of those numbers - would be significantly lower income persons."

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Curious Cafe workshop attendees Eddie Bonsu, Lee Constable, Jan Dods, Shirley Ferguson, Janet Ilchef, Elizabeth Lee, Lizz McCarter, David Pollard and Stephanie Worth helped research this story.