I don’t know what circumstances you are referring to, but it is possible to move back into the original main residence. You could even use the 6 year rule on the second main residence – whether you should or not will depend on the circumstances.

you can only claim one main residence for the exemption for any overlapping period of time. Which one you choose is important because the other will then be exposed.

You could eliminate CGT by claiming the main residence exemption, potentially.

Or use the cost base reset to market value at first rented rule and see how much CGT would be payable. It might be nil or very low.

Moving back in won’t help.

Get some specific tax advice.

They are not your assets if held on trust. You might control the trust and be a potential beneficiary though, but just remember this control is only temporary.

If you are paying money, even from a loan account, to the trust then that is something that will work against you in servicing – whether there are losses or not. You will also have some legal and tax issues as well.

Example 9
Trustee company owns property and suffers a court judgment. Lenders will no longer lend.

Solution
Appointor can appoint a new clean company as trustee.

Here is a copy of an article that I wrote back in 2016:

Trust Strategies to Increase Borrowing Capacity
Here are a few of examples of how using a discretionary trust can increase borrowing capacity.
Example 1

Trust is set up to own property. Property increases in value. But the director of the trustee has suffered a credit blemish and no lender will lend.

Solution – change directors!
Get legal advice first!

Example 2

Trust is set up to own property. Property increases in value. But the director of the trustee no longer is able service with just his income and the trusts rental income.
Solution – bring the spouse on as a guarantor. You could do this with properties in personal names as well.
Solution 2 – bring a friend on as a guarantor. The friend may need to be a beneficiary of the trust and/or a director of the trustee.

Get legal advice first!
Example 3

Trust is set up to own property. Property increases in value. The director of the trustee suffers a court judgment and no lender will lend to him. If this was a property in his own name he would be stuffed for 5 years but with a trust there is a simple solution:
Solution

Director causes spouse/friend to be appointed director and then resigns. The loan is then refinanced with the new director providing a personal guarantee.
Get legal advice first!
Example 4

A trust is set up to own property and loans are obtained with personal guarantees from person A who is the director of X Pty Ltd the trustee.
After a while person A sets up a new trust with a new company Z Pty Ltd as trustee and himself as director. Person A does not tell the new lender about the personal guarantees he has given to the lender for the first trust. Since the new company, Z Pty Ltd, is a separate legal entity to the first company X Pty Ltd, its debts need not be disclosed.
If the lender asks person A about any personal guarantees he has given he should disclose those guarantees. If the lender does not ask person A need not disclose. Thus the borrowing capacity could be increased by setting up new entities.
This method has been promoted by a certain property author and criticised by various brokers, including myself in the past because the new lender would know about the personal guarantees given by person A as there would be a record on A’s credit file. However as time passes these credit file hits become less of an issue and will disappear from the file after 5 years.
Get legal advice first!

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But before doing anything described above each person and the trustee should seek legal advice as there are various legal implications involved.
To be balanced, here are some ways a trust can hinder borrowing capacity.
Example 5

The property’s rent is less than the interest on the loan.

Lenders will not be able to use negative gearing addbacks because the trust has no other income and it does not pay tax. This will reduce serviceability slightly.
Example 6

The property has a taxable loss of $10,000 per annum.

This could potentially save the individual $5,000 per year in tax but would result in a $10k carried forward loss for the trust with no immediate tax benefits unless the trust had other income.

This has 2 effects

Less cash to pay down non-deductible debt
Less cash flow making it slower to build equity.

Trusts are complex legal arrangements so see your lawyer before attempting any of this on your own.

trusts can’t borrow as they are not legal entities, but holding assets as trustee can improve borrowing cap, if the trustee is a company. I have written about this on here before.

These days with low interest rates I think buying a main residence first is ideal because

a) you get a CGT free asset (potentially)

b) no land tax

c) owner occ rates

d) improved serviceability over time

e) ability to debt recycle into investments at lower interest rates

f) ability to add value

g) emotional aspects

h) because it might cost more to rent the same place

i) ability to move out and rent the property yet still keep it CGT exempt.

etc

In that case the 6 year rule could reset as long as the property qualifies as your main residence.

But if you own another property you cannot choose both as the main residence for an overlapping period.

I presume you did a AB search?

A trust is a private relationship, not registered anywhere. You need to find out who is operating the business. It can’t be a trust but would be a company or an individual who is acting as trustee.

If you do a title search it will show who the owner of the property is, but it will probably be leased to someone else. However, with Commercial leasesthe tenant often registers their lease on the title to the property so you could prob find it that way.

Other than that the name will be on invoices, websites etc.

You could also do an ASIC search on the business name.