Building the right broker–solicitor–accountant team for off‑the‑plan

Buying off‑the‑plan isn’t just about picking tiles and waiting for keys.

You’re signing a contract today for finance you may not need for 18–36 months. To get through that safely, your broker, solicitor and accountant need to work together as one team, not three separate silos.

In practical terms, that means:

1. Your broker owns borrowing capacity, lender choice and settlement risk.
2. Your solicitor owns the contract, legal risk and negotiation.
3. Your accountant owns structure, tax and how the money flows.

When those three roles talk to each other early, most off‑the‑plan disasters are avoidable. When they don’t, buyers often meet nasty surprises at settlement.

1. Why off‑the‑plan needs a coordinated advice team

Off‑the‑plan is different from buying an established property because there’s a long gap between exchanging contracts and drawing the loan. In that time:

• Interest rates can move several percentage points.
• Bank policies can tighten (APRA requires a 3% buffer on serviceability tests).
• Your income, business, or personal life can change.
• The finished property might value less than the contract price.

Your broker, solicitor and accountant each see a different slice of this risk. Alone, none of them can fully protect you. Together, they can design a plan that’s resilient even if rates jump or valuations disappoint.

If you haven’t already read them, pair this guide with:

• How to size buffers and manage interest risk: How To Plan For Rate Rises Before Your Off‑the‑Plan Loan Draws
• Using equity for your deposit: How to Use Home Equity for an Off‑the‑Plan Apartment Deposit

These give you the building blocks; this article explains how your team should join the dots.

Each adviser covers different parts of the off-the-plan risk landscape.

2. Who does what? Broker vs solicitor vs accountant

2.1 Your broker’s role on an off‑the‑plan purchase

Your broker is responsible for:

• Borrowing capacity and lender fit – modelling your borrowing power under different interest rate scenarios, including APRA’s 3% serviceability buffer.
• Lender policy risk – understanding which lenders are comfortable with:
  • small apartments or specific postcodes
  • high investor concentration projects
  • longer sunset dates and staged deposits
• Loan structure – P&I vs IO, fixed vs variable, offset vs redraw, multiple splits for home vs investment purposes.
• Settlement planning – timing applications, valuations, and conditional approvals closer to completion.

A good broker doesn’t just chase today’s cheapest rate. They curate a small panel of lenders that actually suit your situation and future plans (see Bank vs Broker: How Many Lenders You Really Need On Your Side).

2.2 Your solicitor’s role

Your solicitor is responsible for:

• Contract review and negotiation – price, special conditions, inclusions, and variations.
• Risk allocation – who wears the risk if the building is delayed, changes, or doesn’t match marketing materials.
• Red‑flag clauses – sunset dates, assignment rights, developer rescission rights, and finance clauses.
• Title and scheme review – strata plan, by‑laws, car spaces, storage, and any easements or restrictions.

For off‑the‑plan, you need a solicitor who reads contracts with lender eyes – flagging anything that might spook a bank or valuation.

2.3 Your accountant’s role

Your accountant is responsible for:

• Ownership structure – personal, joint, company, trust or SMSF – and how that interacts with tax, land tax and asset protection.
• Loan purpose and tax – ensuring borrowing is set up so deductible and non‑deductible debts are clearly separated (loan purpose, not the security property, drives deductibility).
• Funding strategy – whether deposits come from cash, equity, business profits, or family assistance.
• Future moves – rentvesting, upgrading, or selling later in light of CGT rules and any future minimum tax settings.

Your accountant’s decisions need to be implementable by your broker and compatible with your solicitor’s contract strategy.

3. The four key coordination points in an off‑the‑plan journey

Think of the journey in four phases. At each phase, someone is “in the lead”, but all three advisers should be looped in.

If you only involve your team at the contract review stage, you’ve already missed half the value.

Off-the-plan is a multi-year project with distinct decision points.

4. Phase 1 – Before you sign anything

4.1 What you and your broker should cover

Before you pay a holding deposit or sign an expression of interest, your broker should:

• Map your borrowing capacity under:
  • today’s rates; and
  • rates 2–3% higher (in line with the stress‑testing approach used in other off‑the‑plan guides).
• Estimate a safe maximum purchase price, leaving room for valuations to come in lower.
• Plan your deposit:
  • cash savings
  • equity release from another property
  • family assistance (gift, loan or guarantee).

For example, if you’re targeting a $900,000 off‑the‑plan apartment and you have $150,000 cash, your broker might recommend:

• using $90,000 as deposit (10%)
• keeping $60,000 as buffer in an offset
• leaving extra equity untouched for emergencies.

They’ll also flag lender issues with the building type or location, e.g. if it’s a small inner‑city unit where some banks are conservative.

4.2 How your accountant should be involved early

In this same week, your accountant should answer:

• Is this property mainly a home, an investment, or a future rental (rentvesting)?
• Should ownership be in your name, joint, or via an entity?
• How should you fund the deposit to preserve future deductibility where possible?

They should be working from the principle that loan purpose drives tax outcomes, not the property title. For example, if you might turn this into an investment in a few years, they may steer you away from using an offset account that later undermines deductibility if you redraw for personal reasons.

4.3 Early solicitor input

You don’t need a full contract review yet, but you can:

• Ask if there are known risks with that developer or project.
• Get a rough sense of usual sunset clauses, variations, and buyer protections in similar projects.

This early sense check can stop you chasing a project that’s structurally risky before you’ve invested time and money in due diligence.