Count me in!

Here are some reasons I am aware of:

Generally tenants prefer to live in unit blocks that contain fewer units.  More units equals more noise and other such conflicts between tenants.  This all leads to the fact that all other things being equal (condition, location, facilities etc) a rental in a unit block with lots of units is less desirable than a rental in a unit block with fewer units.  So you have an increased risk exposure of vacancies, which means you could struggle to meet your repayments.

The more units in the block, the higher the pricetag of the unstrata'd unit block.  The higher the price, the fewer buyers there are you can offload the property to if you need to get rid of it.  The bank will see this as a risk of them losing money if they have to offload the property in a mortgagee sale.

Yeah my reply was based on the understanding that ILIKE needed income, as opposed to being in the stage of gathering assets

I would be thrilled to bits.  Either way the value of your place will go up, and if your place didn't get rezoned, it's just a matter of time.  Then your place will be worth even more.

Put it all on black!

I haven't heard any such thing.  I remember reading some nonsense speculation in a mainstream newspaper that went something like this:  Hey, maybe the government will scrap stamp duty…. but then there would be a need to put land tax on all properties.  Same same.  Tax is tax is tax. 

In Corio, house.  I have units elsewhere in Geelong.  But for Corio the most appropriate thing to go for is a house. 

I am in Vic, i allow cats in unreno'd property, tenants has to sign a separate pet agreement saying they are liable if the pet does any damage. You cannot claim pet damage on your insurance so charging extra would be wise. I'd say $20 per week for a dog, but in the ad just say "pets negotiable" or tenants might lie about having a pet and then one magically appears after they move in. If there is no pet agreement, put a clause in the lease saying no pets so it can be used as an eviction reason if a problematic pet moves in

Hi Terry,

Sure no worries.  My accountant had of course let me know that the cost would be dependant upon complexity of the tax return and how good my record keeping was, and given me a ballpark guide of circa $1000 for a basic tax return and audit for a smsf that has only one property and some cashola in the bank account.  I asked him upfront precisely what he needed so I could give him the lot in one go to keep the time he had to spend on it down to a minimum, and got it right first time.  Mostly to save myself feeling like I had missed something and would be sent to prison by the ATO hahahah.  The spreadsheets I gave him were immaculate if I do say so myself and as such the fee I was charged for the tax return and audit for a total of $660 ($330 audit, $330 tax return).  I was extremely happy with this.

The kinds of spreadsheets I provided him were spreadsheets showing the splits between SGC pre-tax contributions, voluntary pre-tax contributions, and post-tax contributions…. spreadsheets showing how much was contributed into super funds outside of the smsf and inside the smsf so he could clearly see I came in under the $25k limit, and spreadsheets explaining what each and every transaction on the bank accounts was (with each transaction grouped into category columns as well so he could, for eg, total up everything in the "plumber fees" column.  All the accountant had to do was a sanity check and some copying and pasting of totals figures into the tax return software I suppose!  Nice and easy for him, and thus kept the cost low.  If I had just thrown the bank statements at him and expected him to guess what everything was, it would have cost much much more.

I think it is a good idea to tell people precisely what info they have to give you, and maybe provide example spreadsheets that they can use as a base.  Ask them to package all the information onto a cd or usb stick for you so they don't send it through in dribs and drabs which inevitably costs more of your time to sift through.

Hope this helps!

Good to know Terry, cheers!  The whole SMSF buying property thing is still sufficiently new that trusted professionals in the know are not falling from the sky.  I love your post, a lot!  It makes me very very pleased and thinking about an imminent reno!