@loo The apartment you’ve bought is unlikely to have significant capital gains (you acknowledge you overpaid + apartments don’t grow quickly in value), but you enjoy living in it.
Why don’t you buy a house with an investment property loan, live in it for 6-12 months and then rent it out. By doing so, you get the following:
1) You can elect if the apartment or the house is CGT exempt under the six year rule at the time you sell one of the properties.
2) Any interest paid on the house becomes tax deductible while you’re renting it out, making any mortgage payment manageable. Under the six year rule, there does not need to be a connection between a house’s negative gearing status and its CGT status.
Based on your salary, you should be able to borrow about $1.1m to buy an investment property.