Strategic Advice on Property Purchases and Investments

We’re invested in your long-term success. What we do is personal, and we take it personally.

Your financial decisions connect, so we consider the parts of your financial life that are relevant to the advice you need:

• Property & Investing
• Career & Income
• Tax Strategy
• Insurance & Protecting Your Family
• Super & SMSF
• Wealth & Investments
• Life Events & Changes
• Business & Wealth
• Legacy & Future Wealth
• Retirement Planning

This is how we help you make decisions today with your longer-term goals in view.

Everybody’s situation is different, so we listen first, understand what matters to you and explain your options clearly before we make a recommendation.

No, choosing the property itself sits outside what we advise on.

We advise on strategy, funding, protection and risk: whether a purchase may fit your cash flow, how ownership options compare, how it may affect your tax with your accountant’s input, and what happens to it when you stop working. Selecting the property is a different discipline, and a buyer’s agent may be better placed to help with it.

If you have one, we can work alongside them and suggest questions worth asking.

Partly, and the distinction is worth understanding before you take anyone’s advice.

Direct property generally isn’t a financial product under the Corporations Act, so advice about which property to buy sits outside the financial services licensing regime.

Much of what surrounds that decision can sit inside it. Interests in trusts, companies and self-managed funds can be financial products, and so can the super, insurance and retirement products a purchase affects. That’s the ground we work on, under Synchron’s Australian financial services licence, and our financial advisers meet the degree, exam and registration requirements that apply.

A mortgage broker helps arrange the loan, which is an important part of buying property.

Your broker can help with lenders, loan options and terms. We help you consider whether the purchase suits your wider position and how it may affect your tax, super, retirement and protection, with your accountant’s input on tax.

Timing can matter. Ownership and structure decisions are generally easier to consider before settlement than to change afterwards, so it can help to talk early. We can work with your broker either way.

It depends on several factors, including your tax rate, interest rate, timeframe and need for access to the money.

Extra repayments on non-deductible debt reduce the interest you pay at your loan rate. Investing may offer higher long-term returns, but it carries risk and is taxed differently. Loan features such as redraw or offset, if your loan has them, also affect access.

We can model both paths using your figures and show you how the difference may look over the years that matter to you.

That depends on your lender, your income and the equity available, and what’s accessible and what’s appropriate are two different questions.

A lender or your broker can tell you what may be accessible. That doesn’t show what could happen to the household if rates rise, a tenant leaves or your income stops while a larger loan is secured against your home.

So we test it first: what the repayments look like at higher rates, what buffer sits behind them, and whether suitable cover is in place if you couldn’t work for a while.

Then that’s the advice you’ll receive, in writing, with the reasoning set out.

Sometimes a position needs time to build a buffer first. Sometimes super may suit your goals better than property. Sometimes ownership questions need settling before anything is bought.

We’ll explain what would need to change for the advice to be different. That can be more useful than buying before the timing suits your circumstances.

A property calculator can be a useful place to start, although its results depend on the assumptions it uses about price, rent and growth.

Advice can bring in more of your circumstances: land tax in your state, how the property is owned, what deductions may be worth at your marginal rate, what a vacancy could do to the household budget, and how the property fits with retirement.

Small changes in those assumptions can change a projection considerably, so we model them with your own figures.

Your accountant and financial adviser bring different expertise to the same decisions. Your accountant can advise on tax reporting, structures and consequences; we help you plan how cashflow, debt, super, investments and protection work towards your goals. We can coordinate before important decisions.

What an accountant does

• Prepares and lodges tax returns, BAS and financial statements
• Advises on tax structures such as companies, trusts and partnerships
• Manages bookkeeping, payroll and ATO compliance
• Provides tax advice on the consequences of a transaction

What a financial adviser does

• Sets a long term strategy across retirement, investing and cash flow
• Builds wealth from early in a working life, starting with cash flow, a first home and super
• Recommends specific super funds, investments and personal insurance
• Operates under an Australian Financial Services Licence, which is required to give personal advice on financial products
• Handles retirement planning, Centrelink and aged care strategy, and estate planning considerations

Professional roles and authorisations matter. We provide financial advice within our authorisations and work with your accountant for specialist tax advice and lodgements.

Where they work together

• Tax position. Your accountant confirms your marginal rate, deductions and carried forward losses, which shapes decisions on super contributions, investment structures and the timing of asset sales.
• Business and entity structures. Your accountant advises on the structure itself and your financial adviser works within it for investments, insurance and succession planning.
• Cash flow. Your accountant’s figures can help us understand what’s available for debt repayment, protection and longer-term goals.
• Before key decisions. We can coordinate with your accountant on contributions, asset sales and other material choices in time to consider relevant tax consequences.

Yes, and before a first investment property is a good time to ask.

There’s no cost for the initial conversation, and you don’t need a property in mind or a deposit ready. Tell us what you earn, what you owe, what you hold in super and what you’d like the years ahead to look like. We’ll explain how we can help and the information we’ll gather together.

If buying isn’t the right next step, we’ll say so.