I have used various software over the years and nothing beats excel. You should be able to whip something up in excel. Maybe you would need 2 different tabs, one for the loan and one for the offset interest – treating it like a savings account – and then combine them,

Never believe a bank worker!

I did 6 of these many years ago and would not touch them again.

The major risk is being locked into a option with the tenants benefiting more than you do. Don't allow long term options.

Other risks include being taken to the residential tenancy tribunal and being forced to pay the rates yourself (maybe gotten around by building this into the price of the rent). Problems with repairs maybe.

In my experience, you may gets slightly higher rents during the period, but you will get lower than market value when they cash out. That makes it harder to repeat as you will have limited funds available and the market will be more expensive to buy into again.

There is also the opportunity cost. You will eat up your borrowing capacity and miss out on other deals as your funds will be tied up.

Is your joint venture partner a licenced real estate agent? If not, will they be breaking the law by collecting the rent and managing it all for you?

I would strongly advise to be very careful in entering a deal like this. Feel free to email more details if you want me to look at it further.

Use a quantity surveyor. They should be able to tell you the value of fixtures and fittings too which will give yo ueven more deductions.

Hi Luke

You have had some bad advice there.

Bad on 2 accounts:

1) loans
If your trust is going to be the owner of the property, then it is the trustee's name on title. ie Your company will be the legal owner. So to get the loan in your name would mean the bank would need to lend the money to a third party. This may have been achieveable with some banks in the past, if you were the director of the company, but it is extremely difficult now.

2). Tax
You say you have a family trust. I assume this is a discretionary trust. If you were able to borrow the money in your name, you then have to overcome the hurdle of making the loan deductible. If you were to lend the money to the trust you would be charged interest, and you should charge your trust interest as well, at commercial rates too. But the interest received would cancel out the interest paid. net result is nil.

Another hurdle is that if your trust is discretionary, then there is no guarantee that you will get any distributions. The trustee has absolute discretion. So if you were able to lend your money to the trust with the trust not paying you any interest, you would have no grounds to claim the interest as there is no guarantee of any return on the money invested – ie it is commercially unviable.

If later on you have built up some equity in your PPOR and you get a LOC and onlend it to the trust (eg for the trust to use as deposits) then this is ok. the trust would pay you interest (income) and you would claim the interest you are charged. so net result is the trust claims the interest.

Maybe you were thinking about unit trusts.
With unit trusts each unit hold has a fixed entitlement, so it is possible to borrow to buy units in the unit trust, but still difficult to get a loan for this. It is also possible to tax deduct the interest on funds borrowed to buy units, but it has to be set up correctly.
If you had a unit trust, then you

Hi

You can't claim the new house is an investment if you are living in it.

If your old house is rented out, the interest on the loan used to purchase this house should be deductible. If you are living in the new place, then you won't be able to claim the interest on the extra bit used to purchase this as it is a private expense.

If the old house has the best CG prospects, you may be able to take advantage of the 6 year rule – which would enable you to claim this as your main residence. This could be CGT exempt for up to 6 years. But you can only have one main residence (per couple or individual). Just wait 5 years and work out which has had the biggest gain. If it is the old house and you don't want to sell you could move in again for 6 months and out again and the 6 years would start again.

It is possible, but can be very difficult to do. You will need to make sure you can settle if you cannot sell. Stamp duty would also be payable by yourself and the new purchaser.

The 6 year rule only applies to absences.

A valuation would cost around $300 to $400 and valuers must be licenced. Best to ring and ask what lender panels they are on. If a major bank uses them = good.

If you are doing that good at the shares, why not stick with that?

You don't really have much equity to play with in the property, and it is getting more difficult to get finance.

To get the 4 houses with each name, you would need to sub-divide the land up front. Otherwise, if it is one title, you will have one big loan with 4 names.

i think it also depends on how your rent out the place. If the people are just contributing money for food and bills then this would not be income (so no negative gearing) and therefore no CGT consequences.