Strata office 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. A strata office turns on how strata title and shared levies read to a funder, so it goes to lenders who back these smaller commercial lots and value the suite properly rather than treating the title as a caution. As you grow into more space or add to the holding, the team stays with you beyond settlement. Every figure is subject to serviceability, lender appetite and approval.

More than most firms expect, once your file reaches the right lender. The best publish up to 80% for a strata office suite; others sit as low as 65%. On a $2 million suite, the top of that range rather than the bottom keeps around $300,000 in your pocket. Getting you there is our job.

Not to the loan, and that is good news. A lender prices the security and the servicing: the suite is standard commercial security, and your firm is assessed on its accounts. There is no profession-based LVR grid for general commercial security, so a law firm and an engineering consultancy buying the same floor get the same loan. Where your profession genuinely can matter is with the specialist professional lenders, who run their own eligible-profession programs and will look at medical, dental, legal and accounting practices on terms a general commercial lender will not. We check whether you qualify for one of those before we go anywhere near a standard panel.

The published range for a strata office suite runs from 65% to 80%, and the lender you are taken to decides where you land. Adding equity from a property you already own can lift that to 100% of the price, though not inside an SMSF. The exact figure depends on your file, so talk to us.

When you buy several suites together the valuation is done in one line rather than lot by lot, and we set that basis with the lender up front so you know your numbers before you offer. Where several lots are bought together, a valuer considers what they would fetch sold in one line to a single buyer, rather than adding up what each is worth on its own. That basis can allow for holding costs, selling costs and a profit and risk factor, so the total can land below the sum of the parts. Alternatively, multiple commercial units held as a single investment may be assessed by capitalising the net income. Neither is a problem, but both change the number your LVR strikes against, and lenders also apply a maximum total exposure to one borrower that can bite before the LVR does. We settle the basis with the lender before the valuation is instructed.

Yes. It sits in the same bucket as a shop, a warehouse or a factory, and it is valued on comparable sales and the rent it could command. That is quite different from a pub, a motel or a service station, where the property and the trade are valued as one thing and the lending gears lower. Being in the standard bucket is why an office suite borrows further than most firms expect, and it is why the 65% figure some lenders publish is a policy choice about strata title rather than a judgement about the asset class.

Yes, and it is the most common office purchase we do. This works in your favour: the rent you stop paying to your landlord is added back when a lender tests whether you can service the loan, and the lease you are already on is good evidence of what the suite is worth to a tenant, which helps the valuation. You also know the building, the body corporate and the outgoings better than any buyer coming in cold.

The body corporate, and it is a document rather than a mystery. The strata report tells you whether the scheme carries debt, whether the sinking fund is adequate for a building of that age, and whether a special levy is coming. A scheme with a funded sinking fund and no debt is a genuine asset, because a lender sees no looming special levy waiting to erode its value. It is also worth confirming that any car space, storage cage or exclusive-use area you think you are buying is actually on your title rather than merely on a plan. We read the strata report before you exchange, not after.

Separately from the property, and that is deliberate. A valuer prices the floor, not the joinery your firm installed for itself, because the next occupier will most likely strip it out. So the property carries a property facility and the fit-out carries its own, which keeps the property loan clean and usually improves the rate on it. Partitioning, cabling, servers, desks and meeting-room technology are all funded this way. Because the fit-out is funded on its own facility rather than the property loan, we cost the two separately from the start, so your full budget is planned and your property rate stays sharp.

Two to three years of financial statements and tax returns for the firm, personal tax returns for all guarantors, and BAS lodgements. A professional practice with recurring fee income and a stable partner group services comfortably, because a lender can see predictable earnings covering the repayments, and where you are buying the suite you already occupy, the rent you stop paying strengthens the serviceability calculation directly. Where the firm is young or the accounts understate the income, alt-doc and low-doc routes exist and we will walk you through them.

For a full-doc application, most lenders want two to three years of financial statements and tax returns, personal tax returns for all guarantors, the contract of sale, the current lease if you are buying the suite you occupy, and the strata report. Plenty of firms do not fit a standard full-doc assessment neatly. Alt-doc and low-doc routes exist, supported by an accountant’s declaration, BAS lodgements and business bank statements, at a slightly higher rate. We work through your income situation upfront to identify the best approach.

Yes, it is possible, and we arrange these. An office suite 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 suite 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. A suite used wholly as an office qualifies, and it does not matter whether you or a tenant occupies it. A suite with a residence attached to the same title generally does not. Your operating entity leases the suite 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 a strata office 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 this asset it is frequently a question of lender fit rather than anything wrong with your file: the suite simply went to a lender with a smaller appetite for strata, when another lender publishes fifteen points more for the identical property. That is a solvable problem, and solving it is the most common reason firms come to us. We will look at your situation and give you a straight, encouraging answer on where it is fundable.

Because on this asset the spread between lenders is unusually wide and entirely published, and going direct means you only ever see one point on it. The maximum for a strata office suite ranges from 65% to 80% depending on the lender, the majors publish no owner-occupier limit at all, and the loan terms differ by more than a decade. Knowing which lender fits your suite, your structure and your accounts is the whole job. Presenting an office suite to the wrong credit team is how a fundable purchase gets declined.

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 office is located, we can arrange your finance.

Although our main speciality is property loans for business owners, we also assist with office fit-out finance and working capital for office-based businesses. On asset finance, that covers fit-out and partitioning, office furniture, servers and IT hardware, meeting-room technology and vehicles. On working capital, we arrange business overdrafts, lines of credit and cash-flow funding to cover a partner buy-in, a practice acquisition, or the gap between billing and collection.

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 professional firms and commercial owner-occupiers seeking finance from $100,000 upwards, and buying the suite you already lease is very often a first commercial purchase, so it is well within our wheelhouse. We will walk you through the lender spread, what the suite will actually value at, and the deposit you will genuinely need, before you commit to anything.