Sounds like you are jumping into something without enough time to fully understand the implications. I would suggest you try for more time and then see a lawyer and run through it all. stampd duty, CGT and centrelink etc implications

It can be very hard to get residential finance if you declare yourself as a developer. If you intend on doing small projects, 1 or 2 per title, then best not to call yourself a developer.

Also it will be difficult to get finance if you sell your existing business as you won't be able to demonstrate serviceability.

could be. Make sure only one property secures each loan.

Its still possible to claim the interest personally by using a unit trust – but this offers no asset protection and is inflexible.

I would also suggest a discretionary trust is probably the way to go.

There are also land tax implications to consider. eg. In NSW there is no tax free threshold for land owned in a discretionary trust.

Things have changed to a huge extent.

Most lenders will not even give you a LOC, with undrawn equity. You can purchase something and have the LOC as a product, but not generally get a LOC with more than $10,000 undrawn.

Remember you will only get one crack at it, so be careful.

Just because a property is cashflow postiive doesn't mean it is a good investment. eg. it may be in a mining town with anticipated closure of a mine in the future.

Peter,

I am confused. I can see no reason why you would have to cross collateralise or to use a term deposit as it is now. Also can't see why you would pay LMI.

What you can do is to take the $216,000 in the offset account and use that as deposit on the new one. This will leave your existing house (which will be an investment) with a loan of $216,000. Value is $340,000 so that means 63% LVR.

Assuming you use all of your $216,000 as 20% deposit and 5% costs for your new one, this would mean you could buy up to $864,000 without the need to pay LMI. (unless you are a low doc borrower).

You purchasing your wife's share would help you extract more equity out – but not that much.
eg. You jointly owe $216,000 = $108,000 each.
You buy her share for $170,00
Your total loan will be $278,000

That means you will have extracted $62,000. I guess this is a fair amount, and would result in $3720 in interest pa. If you would deduct this it would save you around $1000 in tax pa, approx, depending on your income.

You need to weigh up the costs of doing it verses the savings.

Another method is to get a LOC on the existing property in addition and separate to the current loan. Up to 80% LVR. This would be approx $56,000. You can then use this LOC to pay for all investment related expenses, maybe even interest. This allows you to divert the money that would have been used to your home loan. It will acheive similar to the buying of the wife's share, but with less cost, although it may take a bit longer.

Good info.

There is also a lot of identy fraud going around. One of my clients had some mail stolen and someone changed his address with the bank and submitted a credit card application in his name. He luckily had signed up for that credit alert so he found out via sms as soon as the bank did the credit check. He then was able to contact them and tell them of the fraud.

Also beware of court judgments. They go on your credit file too. 

Don't forget the company is only the trustee. You can easily pass control of the trustee on by transferring shares in it. Ownership is in 2 forms – legal and beneficial. The trustee is the legal owner. Changing shareholders won't affect the legal ownership. You should also be able to change the legal owner without stamp duty, or just nominal stamp duty, $50 in NSW as long as the beneficial ownership is not changing. The beneficial owners are all those listed in the trust deed. Changing beneficial ownership can result in stamp duty and CGT being applied. So you need to make sure that she is a beneficiary.

What you are doing is not a refinancing but a transfer. Ownership is changing. So you will need to do transfer documents, pay stamp duty and apply for the loan again. it is as if you are selling to the trust.

All banks lend to trusts. You shouldn't have much of a problem there.

You should get legal and tax advice and get a broker who can do the loan side of things. Setting up a company and trust with some advice will cost about $2k.

Trust assets are separate assets to your personal assets so if you are personally sued they are generally out of reach. However, the family law court has extensive powers to make orders over trust property and company property that you control or have an interest in. it can still help though as it adds another layer.

There are also land tax issues and tax issues you need to consider before jumping into this.

in some states there is no stamp duty on transfers between spouses – usually, but not always it is exempt only for the main residence. You should look up the legilsation in your state – probably its the Duty Act or Stamp Duty Act.