SMSF lending, properly structured — not patched.

When the major banks pulled out of SMSF lending in the late 2010s, the market shrank to a small handful of specialist non-banks and a couple of mutual lenders. And from 10 August 2026 the market is commercial only: legislation passed in June 2026 bans new limited recourse borrowing for residential property (arrangements entered before that date are grandfathered, and residential used wholly for business purposes still qualifies as business real property). An SMSF can still buy residential — it just pays cash. Each active lender has its own LVR ceiling, its own minimum fund balance, its own appetite for the property type. Pricing is indicative and file-dependent and moves with the cash rate — our live rate cards carry the current numbers rather than a figure that ages on the page. We write SMSF every month and have done since limited recourse borrowing through your super was legislated. The structure is exacting: a bare trust holds the asset, the SMSF holds the beneficial interest, the loan is limited in recourse to the asset, and any misstep with related-party transactions, in-house assets, or sole-purpose tests can cost the fund its compliance status. The job is to get the loan approved without breaking any of that. If you're buying commercial property or business real property from a related party inside super — or weighing a cash residential purchase against it — the same fundamentals apply: the fund structure, trustee setup, liquidity, and lender appetite need to line up before the contract is unconditional.