SMSF property investing

Why read this book?

Because the stakes are too high to wing it.

Get self managed super fund (SMSF) property right and you can build serious wealth for retirement, with tax advantages that simply do not exist outside super. And after the reforms of 2026, that gap is wider than it has ever been.

Get it wrong and you are looking at ATO penalties, forced asset sales, and in the worst cases losing nearly half your super to a non compliance tax bill.

The problem is, understanding this stuff is genuinely hard. The legislation is dense. The rules are technical. And the people who should be helping you often are not.

Free property seminars? Usually sales pitches in disguise.

Your regular accountant? Probably does not specialise in SMSFs.

The book your mate lent you? If it was written before mid 2026, it is now wrong about the single biggest question in this field: what your super fund is allowed to borrow for.

That last one matters. In 2026 the ground moved. The strategy most Australians associated with SMSF property, borrowing to buy a house or a unit, was closed to new entrants. At the same moment, the tax case for holding property inside super got stronger, not weaker. The centre of gravity shifted to commercial property, an asset class most residential investors have never touched.

This book was written for that world. Not patched for it. Written for it.

It will not make you an expert. You will still need professionals. But it will make you the kind of client who asks good questions, who does not get talked into things they do not understand, and who knows when something is not right.

That is worth a lot.

It might save you from buying a property that does not suit your fund. It might stop you accidentally breaching the sole purpose test, which is easier to do than you would think. It might help you realise you are not ready yet. And that is genuinely valuable, even if it is not what you wanted to hear.

I wrote this with a simple test: if I would not say it to a mate over a beer, it does not belong in the book. No jargon for the sake of sounding smart. No hedging to cover every possible scenario. Just the stuff that actually matters, explained like a normal person would explain it.

What this book is

Buying property through a self managed super fund can be a brilliant wealth building tool. It can also be a trap. The difference is not luck. It is whether you understand the rules, run the numbers honestly, and have the guts to walk away when the answer is no.

Every year the ATO reviews thousands of SMSFs for the same handful of mistakes. The people who make them are not stupid. They are busy professionals who thought they understood the rules well enough. They did not. And by the time they found out, it was expensive.

This book exists so you do not become one of them.

Here is the ground it covers. Whether SMSF property is right for you at all. How to tell if the numbers actually stack up. The rules that will get you into serious trouble if you ignore them. A complete education in commercial property for people who know residential cold, because commercial is now the main game for borrowed property inside super. The flagship strategy of owning your business premises through your fund. How GST, duty and lending really work on a commercial purchase. What is left of residential inside super, and the other ways in. How to buy without stuffing it up. How to stay compliant. And how to make sure you can actually access the money when you retire.

One boundary worth stating. My first book, Build, Stabilise, Leverage, covers residential property investing in your own name, outside super. That is a different game with different rules, and after 1 July 2027 the two games diverge even further. This book owns everything inside super. If you want the outside super playbook, that is the other book.

Throughout this one I use something called the tradie’s two tick test.

Before a good tradie starts any job, they ask two questions. Should I do this? And can I do this? Both boxes need to be ticked, or they walk away.

SMSF property works exactly the same way. The first and most important thing to do is find out whether it is a smart move for your situation. Sometimes the right answer is to wait. Sometimes it is to walk away and save yourself tens of thousands of dollars, endless hours of work, and worries you do not need.

I will help you figure it all out, so you do not get stuck with a job you wish you had not started.

If your knowledge predates 2026

Maybe you researched SMSF property years ago. Maybe a friend bought a unit through their fund in 2019 and you have been meaning to look into it. Either way, if your mental model was built before mid 2026, three things have changed underneath you. Each one gets a full treatment later in the book. Here is the thirty second version.

First, from 10 August 2026, an SMSF cannot take out a new loan to buy residential property. New borrowing is only allowed for business real property, which broadly means commercial premises. Existing loans were grandfathered.

Second, from 1 July 2026, people with more than $3 million in total super pay extra tax on part of their earnings under Division 296. Below $3 million, nothing changed.

Third, from 1 July 2027, negative gearing and the 50 per cent capital gains discount were wound back for property held outside super. Superannuation was deliberately excluded from both changes.

Put those together and you get the strange shape of the current landscape: the tax case for holding property inside super versus outside got stronger at the same moment the geared residential strategy closed to new entrants. Chapter 1 unpacks what that means for you.

The chapters