Thanks Qlds007 and Jamie M

 yes the mortgage broker suggested we take out two loans at the time we were selling on both properties, for the below reasons.  We did not go ahead with this as I didn't want to have a large mortgage on a house the we owned and thought that we shuold be able to get a mortgage with enough cash deposit without using our home as security (we are conservtive which might be costing us??

The theory was  – take out two loans.One on the existing PPOR and one on the new PPOR ( we broke the cardinal rule of buying before selling and had a contract on this house before we sold the other (this house was less because it's further down the road) and we were ok with this)  This gave us a 550k loan on old PPOR and 400 loan on new PPOR. The theory was that the larger loan would be paid out when we went to settlement and we would have a 400k loan on this place which would give us the freedom to purchase an IP when we were ready. Since we would not draw down on the loan it would not cost us apart from the intial set up. 

As I said above we didn't go ahead with this since it was too much at the time with moving to a new suburb and kids into new schools, selling house via auction, etc to think about being ready for an IP (I wasn't sure I wanted to move at all!)

What do you mean by cross collaterliaze ? 

 Have been reading heaps more on the forums and we are coming up to speed but don't know what the above means.

Thanks for your posts, it has been helpful and keeps giving us more questions to answer what will be riqht for us.
Cheers  V

Hi JacM

Sth Frankston is an area that we feel we can afford for the size blocks. From a few posts on other sites it seems that it is on the move. We have  few friends who live in the area so we know  we can do easier research, so I guess we sort of comfortable with it, in that it's not a totally unknown.   The city unit (hawthorn/caulfield/clayton etc) our thoughts were around the uni student and young professsionals we thought that as the city grows these suburbs will be 'closer in' and the price will rise. We have a little knowledge of the West,  and don't really know the nth at all so more research would be a bit more involved.

But since reading the thread on CF+ maybe we should look further field and not neccessarily in the town we live.

Honestly I have been looking at the IP from a housing point of view, not IP. So after last nights reading a stragey is needed more urgently than 'just buy a house before the market moves over spring….