Specialist accommodation property finance

Ardent Capital Group brings the same method to every client: execution and strategy, clear advice for smart lending, and long-term growth. That means the right lender, structure and timing, straight advice so you borrow with confidence, and today's deal built toward where you want to be tomorrow. We are specialists in helping business owners secure finance to purchase their own property, and we understand the complex structures that often sit around it, including multiple trusts, holding companies and self-managed super funds. The real risk with specialist accommodation is a funder reading a purpose-built property as an ordinary commercial building and valuing it short, so it goes to lenders who recognise support-linked income and price it on how it is genuinely built and how that revenue flows. As the accommodation and its income base keep growing, the team stays with you past settlement. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

The clean line is where the income comes from. Specialist accommodation earns its money by letting rooms, apartments or sites: a boarding house, a serviced apartment, a caravan park, a student block or a co-living property. The income is rental income, and the asset is valued on what it lets for. Hospitality is different. A pub, a motel or a hotel is an operated venue where you run a trading business, and it is valued on the trade. Both are things we finance, and knowing which one you are buying is what sends the file to the right lender.

This is the category for accommodation held as a rental-income asset. It spans boarding and rooming houses, serviced and short-stay apartments and their management rights, caravan, holiday and tourist parks, student accommodation blocks, and co-living. What unites them is that the income comes from letting the property rather than trading from it. Each has its own lender panel and its own way of being valued, and each has its own page or is handled here. We match the specific asset to the lender who funds it well and prices it on the income.

Commercial, every time, and knowing that from the start is what gets it funded well. You will read that five rooms make it residential and six make it commercial. That line is folklore and it appears in no lender document. The real reason it is commercial sits above the lender: Helia, the largest lenders mortgage insurer, lists a boarding house or hostel as unacceptable security, and the residential valuation instructions treat a boarding house as out of scope entirely, with no room count involved. A registered boarding house under 10 rooms can borrow up to 80% of value, stepping to 65% at 10 rooms or more, with a maximum single loan around $5 million. We take it to the lenders who fund commercial accommodation well and price it on the income.

A serviced apartment is a strata lot, and once it is committed to a letting pool a lender reads it as specialised security rather than a residential unit. It is funded on its size and its letting arrangement, generally up to around 70% of value. Management rights are a business purchase rather than a property one: you are buying an income stream made of a caretaking salary and letting commissions, and the value turns on the years left in the caretaking and letting agreement. Lenders require a verification report from a specialist management rights accountant. We fund both, and we know which lenders write each.

A caravan, holiday or tourist park is specialised security, so it is funded by a smaller panel of lenders and generally geared between 50% and 65% of value. The number a valuer looks at first is the mix of tourist sites and permanent residents, because the permanent site income is the stable base a lender can rely on, while the tourist income moves with the season. The planning approvals, the site agreements and the letting history all feed into the assessment. We present the income the way a credit team needs to see it, and take the park to the lenders who genuinely write this asset.

Yes, a block is placeable. Pepper publishes up to 70% for student accommodation, so an existing block held as an investment can be funded on commercial terms. Large purpose-built student accommodation is a different, institutional market with its own funding channels, and it is not what this service is built for. If you are buying an existing student accommodation building at the smaller end, we can help, and we will tell you which lenders look at it.

Yes, when it is an existing property with a clear lettable history. No Australian lender publishes a co-living-specific credit policy yet, so these are assessed case by case rather than against a set grid. The fundable, lender-recognised path for an existing property is to present it as a boarding or rooming house, which is the security lenders know and price. We will look at the property, the income and the registration, and take it to the lenders most likely to fund it.

On the income it lets for. Whether it is a boarding house, a serviced apartment, a park or a student block, a valuer works from the letting income and makes an allowance for outgoings and vacancy, rather than valuing the bricks in isolation. A property with a documented letting history and strong occupancy gives the valuer clear evidence to work from, which is why a well-run, well-occupied asset tends to value more strongly than an empty one. We make sure the income evidence is presented properly before the valuation is instructed.

Yes, and most investors do. Holding the property in a discretionary trust, unit trust or company can protect it and set up how the income is taxed, and it changes which lenders will look at the file. Directors, trustees and beneficiaries are generally asked for personal guarantees regardless of the structure, and some lenders reduce the maximum LVR for trust or company borrowers, so it is worth settling the structure before you apply. We present it to the lender with the ownership and income rationale spelled out.

Yes, it is possible, and we arrange these. An accommodation property sits comfortably inside an SMSF purchase, more comfortably than most asset classes. It is also one of the more intricate purchases in commercial finance, and the detail is what decides whether it works. The fund borrows under a limited recourse borrowing arrangement, so the accommodation property sits in a separate holding trust and the lender can only come after that one property. From 10 August 2026 a new arrangement can only be used for business real property. An accommodation property operated wholly as an accommodation business qualifies, and it does not matter whether you or a tenant runs it. A property with a private residence attached to the same title generally does not. Your operating entity leases the accommodation property back from the fund, in writing, at market rent supported by an independent appraisal, and the rent has to actually be paid. Cross-collateralisation is not available inside super, so the fund needs its own deposit and the 100% LVR structures described elsewhere on this page do not work here. Lenders cap SMSF lending below a standard purchase, generally between 65% and 80%, and want cash left in the fund after settlement. We know this sounds complicated. It is, and that is exactly why we do it every day. Reach out to our team and we will guide you through the entire process. We structure the finance, tell you which lenders will take an accommodation property as SMSF security and on what terms, and bring in the SMSF specialists and licensed advisers who set the fund side up. You will not be working it out on your own. Get that right and it is a solid, compliant structure.

Very often, yes, and a decline is usually better news than it feels like at the time. On these assets it is frequently a question of lender fit: the property went to a lender who treats accommodation assets conservatively, when another lender funds them well and prices them on the income. That is a solvable problem, and solving it is one of the most common reasons investors come to us. We will look at your situation and give you a straight, encouraging answer on where it is fundable.

Most of the time, no. We are paid a commission by the lender once your loan settles. Where a purchase requires significant preparation, a small mandate fee may apply, and we will always be upfront about this before work begins.

Although we are based in Sydney, we service clients across all major Australian cities, including Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart, along with their surrounding regional areas. Wherever your accommodation property is located, we can arrange your finance.

Although our main speciality is property loans for business owners, we also assist with asset finance for accommodation providers and working capital for accommodation providers. On asset finance, that covers furniture, whitegoods, fittings and refurbishment for the rooms or apartments, security systems and fire-safety equipment. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and cash-flow funding to cover a refurbishment between lettings, compliance upgrades, and off-peak periods.

Yes. That is our core ethos, helping you understand the right strategy, structure and clear advice from the very first conversation. Our main borrower profiles are property investors and accommodation buyers seeking finance from $100,000 upwards, and a specialist accommodation asset is very often a first commercial-style purchase, so it is well within our wheelhouse. We will walk you through what the property will actually value at, how the commercial classification and registration are handled, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.