Not sure what his commission split was but the salesperson generally gets around 1-1.5% of the sale price, and the office/principal gets the remainder (the other 1-1.5%) Looking at sales on the property sites for the last couple of years, Century 21 Westside doesn't feature very often. Poor turnover coupled with a taste for the black Lexus, moving to large flash offices (which are not very visible and way off the main drag, completely at odds with the visibility most offices want) would be a bad mix. Not sure what the rental roll is like (I think Allison was listed as property management back in '08 and someone more junior on the recent site?). He'd be paying rent, some salaries for staff not on commission only, vehicle/s fuel etc, maintenance, accounting, dry cleaning the yellow jacket etc. I think it's easy to believe he wasn't/isn't very flush with cash. On top of his own issues the entire industry is in the crapper, compared to 5-7 years ago.
I'd say the "self made man" used every bit of money Allison brought into the relationship in pursuit of his dreams.
The house they are in is not owned by anyone associated with them or by a company they control, afaik. Even if he was financial enough to buy the property (which I think may be a single title containing both the house and child care centre, so he'd need $1.5M+) he probably wouldn't be able to legally claim deductions renting something that was not at arms length (ie. if he bought something purely as a tax dodge, the ATO would be a lot smarter than him when it came to tax time). The parents don't appear to be flush either if they have a $300K mortgage over the type of house they're in (purchased for $150k originally), I think Durness Street got pretty wet during the floods.
