Buying or selling property is rarely just a property decision. It affects your cash flow, your tax position, your retirement strategy, and sometimes your Centrelink entitlements.
A property transaction in Sydney is rarely just a property transaction. It's a decision that touches your mortgage, your superannuation, your tax position, your retirement timeline, and often your estate. With Sydney consistently among the most expensive capital markets in the country, the gap between a well-structured deal and a poorly timed one can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime.
Alastair Kennedy works with buyers and sellers at every stage of life — first-time purchasers, growing families upsizing, business owners acquiring commercial premises, and clients approaching retirement who are thinking carefully about what to do with the family home. In every case, the conversation starts the same way: before the property, your whole financial picture.
How you own a property is just as important as which property you buy. For Ferncourt clients — many of whom already hold investment assets or run businesses — ownership structure matters enormously. Purchasing in individual names, jointly, through a company, or via a family trust carries very different implications for land tax, asset protection, income splitting, and eventual CGT liability.
Alastair helps clients think through these questions well before they engage a conveyancer:
Getting these answers right at the point of purchase avoids expensive restructuring later — and in some cases, avoids the wrong purchase entirely.
Investment property is one of the most common asset classes in Ferncourt's client base, and also one of the most commonly misunderstood from a tax and wealth-building perspective. Negative gearing can be genuinely useful — but only when it sits within a broader strategy, not as a justification for buying a property that doesn't otherwise make sense.
For clients adding an investment property to an existing portfolio, or reviewing whether to hold or sell one they already own, Alastair considers:
For business owners, a property decision can be a business decision — and vice versa. Buying the premises your business operates from, acquiring a commercial investment, or using a self-managed super fund (SMSF) to hold business real property are strategies that can work very well when the structure is right. They can also create serious problems when it isn't.
Alastair regularly advises business-owning clients on:
These decisions benefit from an adviser who understands both the business context and the personal financial picture — not one who specialises only in the property transaction itself.
Some of the most consequential property decisions happen at transition points: when the family grows, when children leave home, when retirement draws into view. Each of these moments carries financial planning implications that extend well beyond real estate.
Upsizing families often face the most financially stretched period of their lives simultaneously — higher mortgage, childcare or school fees, reduced household income during parental leave. Alastair helps clients model whether an upsize is genuinely sustainable, and what the debt repayment strategy looks like against other savings goals including superannuation.
Clients approaching retirement who are thinking about downsizing have access to meaningful incentives. The downsizer contribution allows eligible homeowners aged 55 or over to contribute up to $300,000 each from the proceeds of a qualifying home sale directly into superannuation — outside the normal contribution caps. Timing this correctly relative to your retirement date and your existing super balance can make a substantial difference to your retirement income position.
Clients separating from a long-term home — whether through choice or necessity — need to think carefully about how the proceeds interact with Centrelink asset and income tests, how the capital gain is calculated if the property was ever used as an investment, and whether the timing of the sale affects access to means-tested entitlements.
The decision to sell a property is rarely just about the sale price. After agent fees, conveyancing costs, and capital gains tax, your net position can look meaningfully different from the headline number. Alastair works with clients before they list to understand what the net proceeds will actually be — and how those proceeds fit into the next chapter of their financial plan.
For clients selling the family home, the main residence exemption typically shelters the gain from CGT — but not always in full, particularly if the property was ever rented out or used partly for business. For investment property sellers, the timing and structure of the sale can shift the tax outcome substantially.
The question Alastair asks every client before a sale: what happens to the money next? Reinvesting proceeds into superannuation, paying down other debt, funding a business opportunity, or holding cash while the next property is found all carry different financial planning implications. Getting that plan in place before settlement removes a lot of the pressure — and the mistakes — that happen when clients are suddenly sitting on a large sum without a clear strategy.
If you're buying, selling, or reconsidering an existing property — and you want to understand the full picture before you act — Alastair is the right conversation to have first.
Book a Consultation with AlastairBook a no-obligation initial consultation — an honest conversation about where you are today and where you want to be.