Should I buy in my personal name, a trust, or a company?
There is no single right answer — it depends on your goals for asset protection, tax, estate planning and how many properties you intend to hold. Personal ownership is simplest and preserves first-home concessions; a trust can offer asset protection and flexible distributions but changes land-tax and negative-gearing treatment; a company is rarely ideal for holding a home but can suit some strategies. Crucially, lending policy and borrowing capacity differ for each structure, so the tax decision and the lending decision must be made together.
The trap most brokers miss
The trap is choosing a structure on tax advice alone, then discovering the lending does not fit — or vice versa. A structure that saves tax but slashes your borrowing capacity, or triggers land tax from the first dollar, can cost more than it saves. The two decisions cannot be made in separate rooms.
What you actually need
- Clarity on your goals — asset protection, tax, number of properties, estate planning
- A model of the borrowing capacity under each structure
- An understanding of land-tax and gearing consequences
- Coordinated tax and lending advice, not one in isolation
Illustrative scenarios
Teaching examples built from typical situations to show how we approach the problem. Numbers only, never names.
Personal name vs trust vs company
An investor with an existing portfolio and a growing income was deciding whether to buy the next property personally, in a trust, or in a company.
Each structure changes asset protection, land tax, borrowing capacity and how negative or positive gearing flows — and the lending policy differs for each.
We modelled the borrowing and tax consequences of each option together, and matched lenders that lend cleanly to the chosen structure without penalising serviceability.
The investor chose a structure with the trade-offs understood up front rather than discovered at tax time — an illustrative example, always confirmed with formal tax advice.
Illustrative example only. This is a teaching scenario built from typical borrower situations to show how we approach the problem — not a record of a specific client, and not a prediction of your result. Your outcome depends on your lender, your financials and current lending policy.
Why this answer is worth trusting
A multi-service financial practice recognised across 9 national award programs over 12 consecutive years (2014–2026) — including 6× Innovator of the Year finalist at the Australian Accounting Awards (recognising an integrated accounting, tax & mortgage-broking practice) and three finalist categories at the Australian AI Awards 2026.
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