Becaan has likely breached this section by advertising.

If you are running a business then you wil need to seriously consider asset protection for the ownership of this property.

Of course it matters.

Firstly keeping things separate will buy you time. You will also have the choice of which property to sell rather than the bank.

And then there are all the other issues and reasons to avoid it. CC doesn't help you in any way – just hinders.

Its a lot of mucking around to change title. There will probably be stamp duty (tho may be exempt in Vic) and there will be CGT issues if it has been a rental. But by buying out a partner you may be able to free up some equity and use that towards the new property which will be more tax effective.

Generally it is good to hold property separately for asset protection reasons – if one of you goes down you won't lose everything. But since you already own the property there will be bankrupcty Act issues. If you transfer property with the aim to defeat creditors then the sale can be reversed if you go bankrupt – I think there is no time limit if it was done with the intention to defeat. If there is no intention, then the sale can still be reversed for up to 5 years.

So changing names may not reduce your risk

Properly structured, buying an investment property should enable you to pay off your home loan sooner – the more you buy the faster it will be.

TD 51 outlines the definition of principle residence
http://law.ato.gov.au/atolaw/view.htm?locid=cgd/td51/nat/ato

No time limit is specified there either.

thats generous Richard – the book costs over $100

Yep, good point banker.

Main residences are, usually, exempt from CGT. A property can only be your main residence if you live in it – otherwise it is not your residence!

Under s118-145 of the Income Tax Assessment Act you can be absent from your main residence for a period of up to 6 years and still claim it as your main residence, with certain conditions, and therefore avoid CGT on thie property.

There are plenty of issues. This should be avoided where possible.

One major issue is that the lender has you over a barrell and, for eg, if you want to sell one property you may need to get all the remaining securities revalued again. That may be fine in a rising market, but imagine if values had dropped and you needed to sell a property to get out of trouble and the bank won't release it. This happened to one of my friends and he went bankrupt.