Refinancing won't change the purpose as long as no additonal borrowings for private stuff

Was the $130,000 used to purchase the house?

Changing the loan type won't affect deductibility.

No, you cannot repay yourself. I forget the name now, but there is a tax principle that you cannot borrow from yourself.

You should have borrowed the money from someone else temporarily. This is why it is a good idea to set up a trust to hold your cash so that you can borrow from the trust for situations like this.

A settlor can be a beneficiary but there are adverse tax consequences so they shouldn’t be.

The settlor’ role is to hand over $10 or so to the trustee and start the trust. So they don’t need to be trustworthy at all as this is their only role. Usually the trustworthy lawyer or accountant performs this role. As you don’t want a family member to do it for tax reasons

What do u mean by guarantor? A trust or beneficiary can guarantee a loan for the trust if the lender permits it

Yes that is a tough one.

What you could do is to set up a LOC and borrow to pay expenses for the property such as rates, insurance etc. This will free up a few thousand each year and will help, but is slow.

You should talk to your tax advisor about borrowing to pay the interest on the IP too. This will speed things up, but needs to be carefully planned.

And you have the option of selling to a spouse or just sell on the open market and start again. Best to run the figures

That’s crazy. A bank cannot make you use a company structure. Maybe they wouldn’t fund it if you bought it in your own name but a company structure is best avoided when buying property. I would advise clients against it

Reducing transfer amount means reducing loan which means less interest and less money freed up for the new ppor.

You will need a valuation for stamp duty purposes too

I should add that my balance on that 3.99% for the life of hte loan was $24k. I just paid it out because rates had dropped and I rang up to close the card. They offered to send me a cheque for $24k and give me 3.99% for the life of that repayment of the $24k. They are hoping you will be tempted to use the card for something else and then get on the 20% pa cycle. I declined their offer.

You will find anything except a cash advance is a transaction that qualifies for the interest free period. You could buy a car or a house on credit card (one of my clients had $250,000 in credit cards!) but when you buy the merchant will charge you a fee of around 1%. So on a $200,000 house the fee would be $20k which would defeat the saving of interest.

Just remember the more money you chip into the purchase on an investment the less you will have for private purchases. This means you will have to borrow more to purchase your PPOR down the track. More non-deductible interest.