Hi All,
With the family decision to move from Sydney to the Gold Coast by the end of the year for lifestyle and affordability. The plan is to sell our house move up, rent for a year with a view to buying at a later stage when I hopefully I will have settled into a permanent job.
Option 1 selling our house is the preference as we are 99% sure we would not return to Sydney and it would clear all our debts and leave us with some money in the back pocket.
Option 2 would be to keep the house as an investment and rent it out, however if we decided to sell after a year I believe I would be stung for capital gains tax.
So the question I put to all you property experts is – What would you do? Option one or option two, or are there any other options that I may have overlooked?
Thanks in advance,
Puredaycent.
CGT is only paid on the increase of value from when you start renting until you sell unless you can fall under the CGT exempt rules -https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Capital-gains-tax/In-detail/Real-estate/Treating-a-dwelling-as-your-main-residence-after-you-move-out/
Have a read of the page above aas i don’t know a great deal about it. However even if you can’t claim the exemption what would be a better investment? Leave it in the house, possibly appreciating or withdrawing it and doing something else? Also selling is a bit harder when it’s rented too – so another consideration.
I don’t know enough details but my first thought is to hang on to the house rather than sell with no plan to use the money. It costs to buy and to sell, and the money would probably just burn a hole in my pocket.
Would the house be positively geared if rented?
We just moved back from the GC after 9 years. When we first moved to GC we rented then ended up purchasing a house and a few investment properties (homes). I had no idea where to buy until we lived there, hence why we rented first. It’s a whole new world up there and a dog eat dog mentality. I’m warning you, be careful. All the dodgy people start there careers in the GC. All my purchasers since 2008 are worth exactly the same now, no increase at all, while all my investments in Sydney have doubled in that time. However the rents in Qld have increased finally and my IP are positive geared now (after 5 years of negative). Don’t buy anything at Auction. Especially the ones that are set-up in a room and they sell a whole heap of them over a few hours. I won’t name the agency that specializes in this. Most of these are fake and I caught many of them out and they started to ban me from going to them. Absolute snakes in the grass. Renting is very cheap. You can rent multi million dollar homes for a $1000pw.
get an appraisal on Sydney property and rent on the GC for a year or 3, you’ve got 6 before it becomes a real issue……
Hi All,
Thanks for all your replies. It’s always great to get another perspective on the situation and get some tips for the GC. I’m not entirely sure if my house would be politely geared. I have found that the selection for rentals where we would like to live is quite poor.
Cheers,
Puredaycent.Hi Puredaycent,
however if we decided to sell after a year I believe I would be stung for capital gains tax.
I would advise you take up with a MB to discuss your financial options – moves such as you are contemplating are complex, and having a heap of more accurate information would help immensely. See, I believe you are quite wrong with the above statement, and that Capital gains Tax won’t likely come into it “in the situation you are describing”.
But, if you suddenly went in a different direction, then CGT “might” become an issue. So do be sure that you check again once you are settled on a plan.
I believe most Sydney-siders would gain (initially) when moving to Qld – with the difference between house prices from one city to the other. But that can be short-lived if you DO sell up. Really, it would depend on what you did with the proceeds. It seems while invested in a Sydney home, the values have been appreciating very well. But, once the $$ have been taken out of Sydney, what then? Will many of them disappear as you set up in the new environment? Or will you pay down/off any mortgage you had by buying a cheaper house and investing the rest?
There have been other good ideas passed along too – keep on “talking and listening” until you have a better feel for the situation, find an option that sounds like it would suit, and THEN check out all of the financial ins and outs to ensure that the different path hasn’t changed what you thought to be true.
Further to the “talking and listening” bit, share what the likely value and likely rent of your current home might be if you were to rent it out. One of our members might then be able to come close to predicting whether it would be positively geared, or not.
Benny
If you sell in Sydney and buy up there you may not be able to buy again in Sydney.
You could use the 6 year absence rule to keep claiming the sydney property as the main residence while you are not living there – and claim everything as per normal yet not be subject to CGT.
Terryw | Structuring Lawyers Pty Ltd / Loan Structuring Pty Ltd
http://www.Structuring.com.au
Email MeLawyer, Mortgage Broker and Tax Advisor (Sydney based but advising Aust wide) http://www.Structuring.com.au
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