Ah, so the $79k is really borrowings!

Make sure you don't actually withdraw that money and place it in a savings account, or the interest on it may not be deductible. Take it straight from the loan and pay it.

Yes, under s118-145 ITAA 1997 it may be possible

Looks like your loans may be cross collateralised.

The conveyancing fee is not cheap. Extra valuation fee -probably because they are valuing your other property to use it as security.

Why not talk to one of the mortgage brokers that post here first?

Yes Henry, that would be possible, but you would lose the CGT exemption for 50%. But if you moved out completely you could retain it completely exempt in some circumstances

Are there any special conditions about the layout of the design or variations etc?

And what do you want to do?

You would be paying one loan out with another. It is possible to do and to maintain deductibility, but you need to be careful

Firstly, read the contract and see what it says about variations. If it possible you have agreed to allow minor variations. If it is not in the contract then you could be able to use this as a way to terminate the agreement.

If you don't settle on time then the vendor could issue a notice to complete and then they can terminate the contract after 14 days usually and then you could lose your deposit.

What state is the property in?

Everyone wants to pay as little tax as possible and the best way to minimise income tax is to use a flexible structure such as a discretionary trust. Any other structure is inflexible.

Discretionary trusts offer the greatest asset protection too.

But the problem for your mum is that she already owns the property. Transferring means paying stamp duty and losing the asset protection advantages of a discretionary trust (initially anyway). For family law disputes there is no structure that is safe. For succession disputes using a trust can assist as assets held by a trust do not form part of the estate (but could under family provision claims in some states such as NSW).

Since she is at retirement age there is also superannuation to consider. ie a SMSF. Super does not form part of the estate generally either.

A good way to hold assets such as property would be via a unit trust with the units owned by a discretionary trust. This makes things very flexible as the units can be easily transferred without changing ownership and it may be possible to transfer the units (and therefore the house) to a SMSF without stamp duty later on.

Finance is another issue – will she be developing with cash or borrowing from a bank? It may be hard to borrow if she is retiring.

If the properties are held by your mum personally then she can set up one or more discretionary trusts in her will, ie testamentary trusts and leave assets to a trust which you control. Your sister could have the same trust or a separate.

There are a huge number of issues to consider and you will need detailed advice which will be expensive.

Colin,

Yes when i was in the AFP I obtained personal records such as electricity, telephone etc from the providers without a search warrant. This sort of information is requested by filling in a short form and stating what sort of offence you are investigating. Some requests may need to be signed by an authorise officer.

A warrant would be need to intercept telecommunications or to record conversations by listening device etc (state legislation).

Getting back to the SRO, this is a state taxation authority and they would have powers under the Taxation Administration (or similar). This is a State based act which would authorise information sharing. The electricity provider would also be allowed under the privacy acts to release information to a government department to assist in the investigation of a revenue offence.