pbro,It is indeed true that banks will only take 80% of rental...

pbro,

It is indeed true that banks will only take 80% of rental income. The only ones that don't are niche lenders.

The way around this is to have your properties in a trust and distribute income to the trust, thus changing the 'rental income' to 'trust income'.

Acorn,

I don't believe banks go out of their way to classify borrowers as 'property investors'. If you have an investment property you would be considered a property investor.

With regard to ascertaining your borrowing capacity it can differ massively from bank to bank and depending on the structure of your loans. Your borrowing capacity is going to be less if you had say 3 loans with one bank compared to 3 loans with 3 separate lenders.

I.e let's say you have the following CBA loans and want to increase your borrowings with them.

CBA ~ 500K @ 5%
CBA ~ 400K @ 5%
CBA ~ 300K @ 5%

They will use 7% or so for the servicing rate whereas if two of those loans were with two different lenders, CBA would take the actual interest rate rather than the 7% servicing rate.

It can make a massive difference especially across a portfolio consisting of a number of properties.