Advice for complete newbies please

Hi everyone!

We had some good news recently my father has secured his job after months and months of his department restructuring.. and he's finally in a position to consider an investment property! Which is something he's wanted to do over the last 10 years but always dismissed the idea as he couldn't take the risk borrowing capital against our only house (We're a family of 6 so 4 kids).

Basically we don't know where to start and have discussed many different ideas but the general idea is to have me rent the property off him as I would be a permanent tenant/steady income which elimates the risk involved with losing a tenant as well as many other headaches.

Now he's a payg earner or something pays nearly 30k in tax and has never been able to claim a dime (besides a laptop every now and then) but the laws with super recently changed he can access it on his own not to mention contribute himself and has 120k in there which he wants to use to invest with as opposed to the risk/interest rates of taking up another mortgage. Although realistically he can borrow up to 230k he says and negatively gear but we want to take up a little mortgage as possible….of course!

Now we have no idea where to begin. Brainstorming earlier we have Option 1.

At first we were talking houses in the 250-350k price range (narre warren,pakenham, baxter, style suburb and anywhere that will appreciate which is the priority!) . So this would involve negatively gearing (as we only have  the120-150k capital up front). The rent I can afford to pay him per week would be no more than $300-$320 til the day he wants to sell it, I also have a 15k deposit i'm handing him to secure the mortgage incase anything happens with my income. Looking at units they're around at least $250k-$280k and a comparitive house isn't much more (280k-320k) and then there's strata fees and other things so we're not really sure what the best approach is here. We believe units are more a low maintenance thing? But I'm handy as is half of the family so it might be better in our situation to buy an old home and renovate it as opposed to a nice fresh unit. We renovated our current house and added tonnes of value so we have the experience in that department. Also seeing a house isn't much more in the first place and doesn't bear strata fees I don't see why we'd buy a unit over a house with the exception the low/no maintanence? Some of these homes are 3 bedrooms also units only 1/2 bedrooms so we could rent the rooms out later down the track with a house also. My mates parents have 3 students in their investment property, all hiring rooms for $150 per week each, the property is getting $100 more return than it should because of this good management.

With option 2 I half seriously suggested he buy some land/a block outright with his super and my deposit and hopefully it appreciates in value over time, then after some talking he suggested put a kit home on it and I'll rent it out for $150 or something per week.

Although the idea sounds kind've farfetched, we realistically thought his super just sits there doing nothing currently when he could instead put it into a block of land (no real risk??) and just sell the block at a time the land is up in value, which is a lot better than the interest the super makes from remaining untouched. Then on top of that I'm handing him $150 a week positively geared! So it sounds pretty good like that. There's also maybe the possibility of turning the land into a block of units down the track or adding a townhouse and while on that topic our family has plenty of renovating experience under the belt so there's potential to gain capital there too!

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on these ideas or on what you would do if you were in this situation. The main worry is risk and return! And after being so careful for so long our entire lives we don't want to do anything foolish! Any advice would be greatly greatly appreciated!