The person continually said government incentives and also used the term property support service or something to that effect, giving the very real impression that there was some sort of government grant or similar. The person was very good on the phone and even though my friend had no interest at the start, they were somewhat curious and interested at the end. The person also insisted that you needed to be 5 years away from retirement.
Nevertheless, I'll explain it here.
Firstly, there is no government incentive (other than first home owners grant which is not what these people were targeting). What they are referring to is simply tax deductions on being negatively geared and claiming depreciation. So that is the first thing to remember. In fact, not only is there no government incentive, but the state government loves it because the stamp duty you pay is huge.
But, the strategy goes like this:
- Buy a newly built property. Use your existing home or investment property as collateral for the borrowings.
- Rent the property out over the next 5 years, based on current interest rates, it should be roughly neutrally geared, but then also claim depreciation which can be quite high on a new property to get tax returns each year.
- Sell the property in a financial year after you have retired so any capital gains tax is minimised or eliminated. Because you are claiming depreciation each year, you are building up an unrealised capital gain, even if the property value stays flat. Over 5 years, this can be about $30,000-$50,000 depending on the value of the property.
So, the selling features of the strategy is:
- You're likely to get tax returns each year through depreciation even though month to month cash flow on the property will be close to neutral. So, pretty much free money from the government. Who doesn't want that.
- Even though you may incur a capital gain because of depreciation (even if the property value hasn't grown), if it is incurred after retirement, you should still not have to pay tax as you'll have no other income and the 50% capital gains tax discount.
- You have exposure to property (which everyone seems to love so much) so if you get growth in the property market you will also do well.
It all seems so good. Getting good tax deductions while you are still working to then incur the capital gains tax in retirement when you might pay no tax, plus potential growth.
But, there is some downsides and this is what they gloss over and where the strategy has its pitfalls:
- Property has very high transaction costs. Over $14,000 stamp duty to purchase a $450,000 investment property. Then sales commission of approximately $10,000. A total of $24,000 of transaction costs is a big hurdle to get over.
- The properties that these people are selling are paying high commission. Whilst it isn't a direct cost to you, you are still paying it. If the developer can sell the land and property for $440,000 but then it is on sold at $450,000 (with a $10,000 commission), then the real value of the property is $440,000 and you need growth to recover that. This can impact the real growth you achieve on the property between when you buy it and sell it.
If I do some rough spreadsheeting on fair assumptions, it is very difficult to have turned a profit after you factor in these costs. And you definitely need growth to turn a profit.
But at the core of the strategy is huge leveraging (gearing) for someone nearing retirement and in my experience, not a prudent investment strategy (do we still remember Storm financial?). Investing in any growth asset should be done with a time horizon of at least (and I stress AT LEAST) 10 years, so any short term leveraged investment strategy is not wise. But, there will always be these things out there and based on the amount of people who share obvious fake Facebook competitions and get sucked in on scams in emails, opening attachments from fake email bills etc, I think there will always be a market for these people, in one form or another.
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