Marty998, the majority of the funds have not come from investment property gains. The gains I have made are going to be offset a little against prior year capital and income losses, so CGT bill wont be too great (less than 6 figures). Needless to say, the prior year losses have all come from the investment properties alone.
I still stand beside the fact that whilst property may have worked well in some parts of the country and for some periods of time in the last decade or two and for some investors, I am highly doubtful that in the coming years it is going to prove as profitable in those same parts or as in such a short time frame. Oversupply of units, China govt restricting cash flows out of China, mandatory withholding tax for foreign investors (and particularly recent reduction to sales over 750k), pricing at highs in Sydney, no great increases or growth of salaries/wages, net migration controls (compared to previous levels), no real sign of anything juicy or exciting happening in economy, younger generation carrying different attitudes to ownership and how you use housing, short term airbnb etc, plenty of other real estate options in other countries with less barriers to entry and guaranteed yield, availability of funds/indexes related to property, soft retail numbers. All these things don't particularly excite me about spending any money on residential real estate as an investment in Australia any time soon.
Don't get me wrong, I am not speaking doomsday and I'm not one of the preachers who keeps banging on about "oh I can't wait for the 40% overnight correction when the bubble bursts on property and that's when I'll buy". If anyone truly wants this to happen, the flow on effects will be far greater than anything else they need to worry about instead of just trying to snare a cheap house. I think the market will kind of stay where it is, maybe a grow a little, stay relatively flat, certainly single digit percentage capital growth or maybe single digit drops over the space of a year or two only. There won't be any major short term double digit corrections, but its going to be soft going for some times and no major double digit improvements either, I believe. Add that to the absolute annoyance and bullshit you have to put up with in terms of tenants, tenancy authority, agents, maintenance and all the other rubbish in between just to try and get a reasonable cash flow out of it then in my opinion you can certainly do a lot better from the comfort of your armchair without any of the stress.
On the trust, I am still trying to work out if you distribute to the investment company and pay 30% tax, what the funds then do whilst sitting in that company. How do we get them back into the trust account again and start the investing cycle all over again? I think the answer is that you can't, which effectively means you need to simply perform fresh, new investments with the investment company. I am guessing setting up a brokerage account in the name of this company and performing further investments?
It's also confusing about what the end game looks like. What happens in ten years if we want to dissolve the trust, dissolve the investment company. What is the end game in getting the funds out of these vehicles at that time, in a most tax effective manner.