ACL 390611 | MFAA Member | Established 2005
Commercial Lot Loans forLand That Earns Nothing Yet.
Every other commercial facility is assessed against something that produces income. A vacant lot produces nothing, and will not until you build on it or sell it. That single fact changes the lender panel, the terms, and what the application actually has to prove.
15 minutes with a commercial specialist. Bring the lot, the zoning and what you intend to do with it. We would far rather see it before the contract than during the cooling off period. We charge you nothing at any stage. Lenders pay us a commission on settlement and we disclose it in writing before any work begins.
Intellect Finance – Commercial Land Finance
Independent since 2005 | ACL 390611What Is a Commercial Lot Loan?
A commercial lot loan funds the purchase of vacant commercial or industrial land, or a strata lot, before anything is built on it. The land produces no income, so the lender is not assessing rent or trading from the site. It is assessing what the land is permitted to become, and how the debt gets repaid once it does.
That is what separates it from every other facility in the commercial range. A commercial property loan is assessed on a building and its lease. A construction facility is assessed on a contract and a cost plan. A lot loan has neither, because at the point you buy there is nothing there.
So the questions are different. What can lawfully be built here, is the lot registered and serviced, how long until it produces anything, and who is paying the interest in the meantime. A lender answers those before it answers anything about price.
Common Situations
Why People Come to Us for Commercial Lot Loans
Six situations. They get progressively harder to fund as you move down the list, and the reason is always the same.
A registered industrial lot to build your own premises on
The most straightforward version. Serviced, correctly zoned, and with a business behind it that can carry the interest. This is where the widest panel sits.
A strata lot in an industrial or business park
Bought off the plan or on completion. Assessment leans on the scheme, the developer and the depth of the market for that lot size rather than on the land alone.
Land bought while a DA is pursued
You are funding time as much as dirt. The panel narrows sharply and the whole application turns on how long the approval takes and who pays for the wait.
A lot in a stage that has not registered yet
Contracted but untitled land. Registration timing routinely slips, and a finance approval that expires before the lot registers is one of the more common ways these deals fail.
Adding a neighbouring lot to a site you already hold
Amalgamation to make a larger site viable. Often the strongest version of a land application, because there is an existing asset and a clear reason for the purchase.
Land ahead of a development
Site acquisition for a project that will later need its own facility. See development finance for the stage that follows this one.
Social Proof
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Joseph Sukkar
Principal Broker · ACL 390611
Who You’re Dealing With
Built on 25 Years in Australian Finance
Joseph Sukkar started in finance in 2000 and founded Intellect Finance in Penrith in 2005. Since then the team has arranged more than 6,500 loans for clients across Australia, from first homes to complex commercial and asset finance.
Commercial lot files sit with Charbel, our Commercial & Complex Lending Specialist, and they are the kind of file where the useful work happens before anything is submitted. Zoning and permitted use, registration status, services, easements, overlays and the title itself are all visible from the outset, and most of what kills a land application is sitting in that first look. The other half of the job is the exit, because a lot loan is rarely the last facility on a site and the one you sign should not make the next one harder or more expensive than it needs to be.
Part of Our 100+ Lender Panel
The names most people recognise are residential lenders. Much of what we arrange runs through funders that do not advertise to the public. Accreditation with a lender is not an endorsement by it, and which lender suits you is decided by your file rather than by who is on this list.
Found a Lot?
Send us the zoning and the title. That is enough to start.What Actually Decides It
Land Produces Nothing. That Changes Everything.
Every other commercial facility has something generating income behind it. Vacant land has an owner paying to hold it and nothing coming the other way. Six consequences follow from that, and together they explain almost every decline.
The debt is serviced from somewhere else
There is no rent and no trading from the site, so repayments come out of your business, your other property income or your own pocket. Lenders assess that other source as closely as they assess the land, which is why a strong trading entity behind a modest lot funds far more easily than a weak one behind a good site.
Zoning sets the value rather than the area
Two lots of identical size on the same street can value very differently on permitted use alone. What the planning controls allow, what the height and floor space ratio permit, and whether your intended use is permissible or merely arguable all feed into the valuation before a single measurement does.
Registered and serviced are two separate questions
An unregistered lot cannot be mortgaged until the plan registers, and registration dates slip. Separately, a lot without water, sewer, power and legal road access carries a cost to connect that a valuer will notice. Each of those two issues narrows the panel on its own. Together they narrow it hard.
The exit is the assessment
Build and occupy, build and sell, or hold and resell. A lender wants to know which one, and by when, because that is how the facility gets repaid. Land bought with no articulated exit is the single most common reason a lot application goes nowhere, and it is entirely within the buyer’s control to fix.
The site’s history is part of the security
Commercial and industrial land carries a past. Previous use, fill of unknown origin, easements running through the buildable area, and flood, bushfire or acid sulfate overlays all affect both what can be built and what a valuer will sign. Contamination in particular can make a site unmortgageable rather than merely expensive.
The carry runs the entire time and may not be deductible
Interest, rates, land tax and insurance accrue from settlement with nothing offsetting them. Worse, the ATO denies deductions for the costs of holding vacant land in many cases, and whether that denial applies turns on what entity holds the title. Most buyers discover this after the contract rather than before.
Checked August 2026. Sourced from the Australian Taxation Office. The ATO states that from 1 July 2019 you cannot claim a deduction for the expenses of holding vacant land, including ongoing borrowing costs and interest on money borrowed to acquire the land, land taxes, council rates and maintenance costs. The ATO states the denial does not apply to a corporate tax entity, a superannuation fund other than an SMSF, a managed investment trust, a public unit trust, or a unit trust or partnership whose members are all entities on that list, and that there is an exception where the land is used in carrying on a business. The ATO also states that holding costs which are not deductible may be included in the cost base of the asset to reduce a later capital gain. See the ATO on deductions for vacant land. This is not tax advice and we are not tax agents. Confirm your position with a registered tax agent before you go to contract. The limits of Best Interests Duty are set out in ASIC Regulatory Guide 273. Everything else on this page is described in the important information at the foot of the page.
The Honest Comparison
Buy Before the DA or After It?
This is the real decision on a commercial lot, and it is made long before anyone thinks about a loan. It determines the price you pay, the lenders available to you, and how much of the wait you are funding.
Buying unapproved land
- A lower entry price, because the risk of the approval is still unresolved
- You capture the uplift if the approval lands, rather than paying someone else for it
- The scheme is designed to what you actually want to build
- A far narrower lender panel, on more conservative terms
- You fund the whole approval period with no certainty at the end of it
Buying approved land
- A wider panel and better terms, because the use and the value are settled
- A short, defined path from settlement to a construction or development facility
- Far less time carrying an asset that earns nothing
- You pay for the uplift the previous owner created by taking the risk
- You inherit someone else’s scheme and its conditions of consent
Most people get the price right and the carry wrong. The land deals we see fail are rarely the ones that overpaid. They are the ones where the buyer could fund the purchase comfortably and then could not fund eighteen months of interest, rates and land tax while the approval moved, with the ATO denying the deduction on most of it. If you are choosing between a smaller approved site and a larger unapproved one, and the carry on the larger one is anything other than clearly affordable, take the smaller site. That is a smaller loan and less work for us, and it is still the right answer. Bring us the numbers before you sign, and model the holding period at twice what the agent told you.
Model the Carry Before You Sign
Bring the numbers on interest, rates and land tax at twice the holding period the agent told you. Better to know before you sign. Fifteen minutes. No obligation.The Difference
The First Lender to Say No Tells You Almost Nothing
Vacant land is where credit policy varies most violently between lenders. A site one will not look at is unremarkable to another, on identical numbers.
We Check the Lot Before the Lender Does
Zoning and permitted use, registration status, services, easements, overlays and the title itself. Most of what kills a land application is visible from the outset, and finding it in week one rather than week six is the whole value of doing this first.
We Plan the Exit at the Same Time as the Purchase
A lot loan is rarely the last facility on the site. We look at what takes it out, whether that is a construction facility, a development facility or a sale, and we make sure the land loan you sign does not make the next one harder or more expensive than it needs to be.
Always in Writing
Buying commercial land is a business purpose, so Best Interests Duty does not apply. ASIC Regulatory Guide 273 limits that duty to credit regulated under the National Credit Act. We disclose in writing how we are paid before you proceed regardless of whether the law requires it.
We’ll Tell You the Carry Doesn’t Work
Where the holding costs over a realistic approval period would strain the business funding them, or where the exit depends on an approval nobody can promise, we will say so before you sign. Talking a buyer out of a site costs us the loan and the construction facility behind it.
The Process
What Happens and What We’ll Need
Fewer documents than most commercial facilities, and more that turns on what the documents say.
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15 minutes
The lot and the plan for it
Where it is, what it is zoned, whether it is registered and serviced, what you intend to build, and what is paying the interest until you do. No documents. You will finish the call knowing whether it is fundable and what the likely constraint is.
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We check
The title and the planning position
Title, plan of subdivision, easements, zoning and permitted use, overlays, servicing and registration status. This is where land deals are won or lost, and it costs nothing to look. If the lot has a problem that will stop a valuer, you should know before you exchange rather than during finance approval.
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You gather
Contract and entity documents with servicing evidence
Less than a trading facility needs, but the servicing evidence carries more weight because the land itself contributes nothing.
- Contract of sale and section 32 or vendor statement
- Title search and plan of subdivision
- Zoning certificate and any planning advice
- Development approval and conditions, where one exists
- Business financials and tax returns for the servicing entity
- Details of existing facilities and other property held
- Evidence of the deposit and its source
- Entity structure and identification for directors and guarantors
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We manage
Approval and valuation around the registration risk
Lender selection, valuation, conditions and settlement. Where the lot has not registered, we manage the gap between approval expiry and registration, which is the single most common way an otherwise sound land deal falls over. Where registration keeps moving, we go back to the lender before the approval lapses rather than after.
Track Record
Land Is the First Thing Lenders Stop Writing
When conditions tighten, vacant land comes off the appetite list before anything else. Knowing who is still writing it this month is most of the job. We have run a commercial desk alongside residential since 2005.
Related Options
What Comes After the Land
A lot loan is almost never the last facility on a site. These are the ones that follow it, and the one that replaces it if plans change.
Commercial construction
Building premises you will occupy. The usual take-out for a lot loan on your own site.
Development finance
Where the site is being built out to sell or lease rather than occupied.
Commercial property loan
Buying a building that already exists, which is often the better answer than land plus a build.
Land loan
Residential land bought to build a home on. Different rules, different assessment.
Mezzanine finance
Where the deposit gap on a site is the thing standing between you and the purchase.
Every commercial facility we arrange
Back up to the full commercial finance range if none of these is it.
Send Us the Title and the Zoning.
We’ll tell you what will stop it before a lender does.Questions Answered
Commercial Lot Loan FAQs
The questions buyers ask us most often before a land contract goes unconditional.
What is a commercial lot loan?
A commercial lot loan funds the purchase of vacant commercial or industrial land, or a strata lot, before anything is built on it. The land produces no income, so the lender is not assessing rent or trading from the site. It is assessing what the land is permitted to become, and how the debt gets repaid once it does.
Can I borrow to buy vacant commercial land?
Yes, though the lender panel is narrower than for built commercial property and the terms are more conservative. What moves it most is zoning and permitted use, whether the lot is registered and serviced, and whether there is a credible exit. A registered, serviced, appropriately zoned lot with an approval attached is a very different application to raw unzoned land.
What deposit is needed for a commercial lot loan?
More than for built commercial property. Lenders advance a lower proportion of value on vacant land because there is no income and a slower resale market if things go wrong. The exact proportion varies by lender, by zoning, by whether services are connected and by whether an approval is in place, so it is not something that can be quoted without looking at the specific lot.
Do I need a development approval to get finance on a commercial lot?
Not always, but it changes everything about the application. Land with an approval in place has a defined use, a defined value and a defined path to a construction or development facility. Land without one is funded on what it might become, which fewer lenders will do and none will do cheaply.
Can I claim the interest and rates while I hold vacant land?
It depends on who holds it, and this is a tax question for your registered tax agent rather than for us. The ATO states that from 1 July 2019 deductions for the costs of holding vacant land, including interest on money borrowed to acquire it, land tax, council rates and maintenance, are denied. The denial does not apply to a corporate tax entity, a managed investment trust, a public unit trust, or a unit trust or partnership whose members are all such entities. There is also an exception where the land is used in carrying on a business. The ATO further states that holding costs which are not deductible may be included in the cost base to reduce a later capital gain.
What is the difference between a commercial lot loan and a land loan?
The security and the purpose. A land loan is usually residential land bought to build a home on, assessed against your personal income under consumer credit rules. A commercial lot loan is business purpose, secured against commercial or industrial land, and assessed on the land’s permitted use and the exit rather than on a payslip.
How does a lot loan convert to construction or development finance?
It usually does not convert. In most cases the lot loan is refinanced and taken out by the construction or development facility at the point works begin, which means a second application, a second valuation and a second set of costs. Planning that step at the time you buy the land is far cheaper than discovering it eighteen months later.
Does Best Interests Duty apply to a commercial lot loan?
No. ASIC Regulatory Guide 273 states that the best interests obligations apply only to credit regulated under the National Credit Act, meaning credit provided to consumers for personal, domestic or household purposes or for the purchase or improvement of residential investment property. Buying commercial land is a business purpose. We disclose in writing how we are paid on every transaction regardless.
Visit Us
Penrith Based.Clients Australia-Wide.
Penrith is our head office and the one you can walk into without an appointment. We also meet clients at Parramatta and in the Sydney CBD by arrangement. Land files run alongside your solicitor, your planner and your accountant wherever they are based.
Ready When You Are
Tell Us About the Lot.
Where it is, what it is zoned, whether it is registered, and what you intend to build. Fifteen minutes and we’ll tell you what is likely to stop it, which lenders are still writing land in this market, and what the holding costs look like over a realistic approval period. If the carry does not work, you will hear that before you exchange. Penrith based, clients Australia-wide. Intellect Finance Pty Ltd, ACL 390611.
Buying commercial land is a business purpose and sits outside the consumer credit framework, so Best Interests Duty does not apply to it. We disclose how we are paid before you proceed on every transaction. Nothing on this page is credit assistance, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice or an offer of credit, and no outcome is guaranteed.
Intellect Finance Pty Ltd | Australian Credit Licence 390611 | MFAA Member | AFCA Member
Important information General information only. Not credit assistance or an offer of credit. We charge you no fee. Every caveat and source on this page is collected here. Tap to read.
General information only. The content on this page is general in nature and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. It is not credit assistance, financial advice, legal advice or tax advice, and it is not an offer of credit. You should consider whether it is appropriate for you and seek your own advice before acting on it.
Nothing here is a guarantee. Loan approval, borrowing capacity, interest rates, loan to value ratios, valuations, timeframes and eligibility are determined by individual lenders and by independent valuers, not by us. They differ between lenders and change over time. Lender appetite for vacant land moves faster than for any other commercial security and tightens first when conditions change, and registration dates are outside anyone’s control. Any figure, range or timeframe on this page is indicative and is not a quote, an offer, or a prediction of your outcome.
Business purpose lending. Credit provided wholly or predominantly for business purposes is not regulated consumer credit, and the Best Interests Duty and responsible lending obligations under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 do not apply to it. We disclose how we are paid in writing before you proceed on every transaction regardless.
Tax and legal. GST, stamp duty, land tax, the deductibility of holding costs on vacant land and the tax treatment of any ownership structure depend on who holds the land, on your circumstances and on how the contract is written. We are not tax agents, accountants or solicitors. Confirm the position with a registered tax agent, the Australian Taxation Office, your accountant or your solicitor before acting.
Planning and land. Zoning, permitted use, planning controls, registration timing, servicing, easements, contamination and environmental overlays are matters for your solicitor, your planner, a suitably qualified consultant and the relevant council or authority. Nothing on this page is planning, environmental or legal advice, and no statement here should be relied on as confirmation that any particular use is permissible on any particular lot.
How we are paid. Intellect Finance does not charge borrowers a fee for arranging finance, and does not charge a clawback fee where a loan is discharged early. Lenders pay us a commission on settlement. The basis of that commission is disclosed to you in writing in our Credit Guide before any credit assistance is provided.
Third-party information. Where this page refers to government schemes, regulatory settings, tax treatment or lender policy, that information is sourced from the relevant authority and was correct to the best of our knowledge at the date shown on this page. Those rules change, sometimes without notice. Always confirm the current position with the issuing authority or with us before relying on it.
Found something wrong? If you believe anything on this page is inaccurate or out of date, tell us at joe@intellectfinance.com.au and we will review and correct it.
Intellect Finance Pty Ltd | Australian Credit Licence 390611 | MFAA Member | AFCA Member