Seek legal advice on that gift – first thing to do.

Best thing to do is to look at the legislation. First Home Owners Grant Act in the state in which you are purchasing.

Found it Richard,

In NSW this is probably the relevant act MINORS (PROPERTY AND CONTRACTS) ACT 1970

eg see s20
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/maca1970348/s20.html

I was inviited into a group thing many years ago and didn't join. but the group went ahead anyway. It is very hard to come to decisions when there is a group. It is dedious and then the ones who don't get their way resent the others. This group took many months to just choose the name and they then formed a company. Then they realised finance was the biggest hurdle.

Actually there was a second group that I was involved in. 5 people and 4 all wanted to be a director. I was the only one that didn't want to legal burden. This one purchased a property and 4 of those sucker directors guaranteeed the loan while I didn't. This was for a development deal and also went nowhere because it was just so hard to get people to meetings and to agree on things. Also a silly name was chosen which I didn't like, but it didn't really matter, but I was outvoted. It was also hard to extract money from members. We all had to put funds in and everyone agreed, but then when it was time to do it a few just didn't and it was like getting blood out of a stone….

Hi Jamie

This was a loan increase and I tried to get anz to leave the funds there available as redraw or draw down and pay back in but no luck (just had an idea now – could have paid out as a bank cheque and client deposit back in).

This is called a deed of partition. It has to be set up like you say with each % ownership in accordance with the final land size for that person. Should be possible to avoid stamp duty on the final transfer (or nominal) and a beneficiary is assessed, generally, as the owner for income tax purposes. Legally each person will own the same percentage too so it will be the same.

But the hard part will be finance. Each and every wner will have to guarantee or be joint borrowers with all the others. Joint and severally liable etc.

Subject to servicing still…

The bank can come after all your assets. But unmortgaged assets will take longer to take, I mean property not mortgaged to that bank relating to the loan in question.

But the real advantage is if you are in trouble you could sell one property and keep the other and use the cash released to get you out of trouble.

If you had 2 crossed properties you could sell one but only with the bank's permission as they would need to release the mortgage on the remaining property. To do this they would need a new valuation, perhpas new financials too and they may even require the money released from the sale come back into the loan of the remaining property. This could leave you up shit creek. Imagine if one property had dropped in value….

Many reasons why you shouldn’t cross collateralise. Similar to why you should not allow the bank to put your gonads in a vice.

Just do a google for "veda credit report free" and please report back.