Broker/Adviser/Accountant - expectations?

Howdy all,

I am relatively (very!) new to all this, and am trying to get together a support team to help me forward, but so far I have not been getting the response I am after.
- I've only spoken to 1 broker so far, and while he very quickly gave me some quotes on finance, there was no structure or discussion about expansion forward (ie lumped all numbers into 1 bucket for the purpose of pricing, and said "we can split it any way you want"), when I asked him if we should do X for tax purposes, he said that is for our accountant to advise
- every financial adviser I have spoken to thus far essentially says "make a will, tweak your super, pay off bad debt (we have none), save money...", with no specific, technical advice
- my accountant is quick and easy for our (thus far) simple tax return, but isn't giving us any pointers on where we should be spending money on our IP or elsewhere.

Should I be expecting more from these people? How do you coordinate the input from various support personnel? Do you need to get them all in the same room to come up with the plan?

Short info on where we are at: We have 1 IP that we will move in to in a few years, we are renting for cheap from family, we have a decent wad of cash and have some equity in the IP (pending valuation). We are looking at buying something now, and I'd like to buy again as soon as further funding is available (might even be possible to buy 2 more now), then save/grow equity and repeat.

Any recommendations for above people in Newcastle? (I suppose it is not necessary for them to be local, but I think it would be easier at this stage in our path to be able to meet face to face, particularly for my wife). TIA.

Cheers,
Inertia

 

Hi Inertia,

Just be careful of concentration risk when having all your lending with the one lender.

It is very important that you structure your loans in such a way that you don't contaminate the tax deductibility of the loans. For example, lets say you have a home and there is a mortgage against this of $400,000. You may have a further $100,000 in equity to access against this property in order to use as a deposit for the next purchase.

You should not increase the existing loan from $400,000 to $500,000. You should create a separate split for $100,000 as the purpose of the $400,000 and $100,000 differ. This will create a tax nightmare for both you and your accountant.

Have you calculated how much equity you have against your existing properties?

 

Brokers cannot give structure advice or tax advice. Only advice in setting up loans - loan structure.
Financial planners are the same.

The only people who can give taxation advice are lawyers and tax agents - not accountants unless they are tax agents as well.

 

Hi inertia, chat to one of the brokers on here - I'd be very surprised if your experience was repeated with any of them. And while we're not able to give tax advice, many of us have a very good knowledge of the tax side which is SO important when dealing with investment lending.