I’m new here so hello everyone

Firstly wan0151 great job to you and your wife what a awesome team knocking off the principle on your PPOR in 10 years.

Looking at your scenario from my eyes I feel your frustrations re being told you have no more loan serviceability. Its important to note (and Terryw or your broker may be able to elaborate), from my knowledge and personal experience that a lender is only allowed to let you borrow up to 30% gross of work salaries at their determined interest rate. Ie you may have a 3.99% on the loan but the assessment may be on 6% and they may allow you up to 80% of the IP income. That said  30% of 146k sal + 80% of rental income then less other commitments like Car and/or Personal loans and CC linits. With more detail of the IP income you could roughly work out where your at with your lending ratio. I have no knowledge of whether the100% LVR on both IP’s is helping  or hindering your case in the lenders calculating of either / both your equity and rental income. (They may be secretly happy you now have a 80% LVR rather than the 100% LVR you had for both.)

In response to your query re people have 10+ IP and how they do it. Using what I said before say a couple have 10 properties with avg rent $200p/w per property and combined sal of $80k p/a. The maths would be 104000 x 80% = $83200 + 30% of $80k = $24000. The total for servicability is  $107200. In your scenario from rough info 30% x $146k= $43800 and 80% x $54k = $43200 servicability $87000.  Plus if a couple have bought 10+ that could have been at the rate of one per year and the first year property might have been $100k and the 10th year property could be $280k. And remember rules and rates would have changed over that 10year+ period.

Lets bring the focus back to you and what you as a couple are after. Capital growth, passive income,  a special number of  IP’s. You two have got to work on that answer.

Im not a professional giving advice but too late to bring a company on board as I imagine heaps of extra stamp duty to pay everywhere.

Terryw is right its not the number of properties and yes you could sell and buy 16 cheap properties. You could sell both IPs pay off your PPOR and be debt free use the excess funds to start again with a setup via compan(y)ies. (Keeping your PPOR safe from cross collateralisation) or Sell the 1IP to be PPOR debt free and keep the other IP and use LVR balance to start a passive income portfolio while keeping the capital growing IP. Sell both IP’s and borrow up to 80% LVR and buy a commercial property outright in a compan(y)ies and just have the PPOR paid off with your sal and the passive income ( in keeping with Steve’s idea of owning commercial property debt free amd doing thing for income not fortax saving).

There are many possible combinations of scenario’s but it has got to fit your goals and risk levels.