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Hello, I'm about to choose an accountant for to set up my first SPV, which I will use for my next investment and any further to that. I have narrowed it down to two accountancy companies, both of which I quite like. A) The first is a company of about 15 employees, but the owner handles most of the client relationships and tax advice himself. He seems very switched on and gave me a lot of advice on the phone for free when I first spoke to him. They are not property specific, although say that property investors make up nearly half their business and they have their own property investments. Cost ~£1,300/yr. B ) The second option is a property specific accountancy that branched out of a larger firm a few years ago. They would assign me an accountant who would manage my business and I would get 4 half-hour consultations with a year for tax advice, plus unlimited more general advice and technical support. They also have their own software for recording and tracking property finance and operation, which sounds quite useful. Cost ~£1,000/yr. My feeling is that A) might be a slightly more personal experience and possibly spot more opportunities to optimise drawing income from the company, but B ) is more tailored to the property investor so might spot more opportunities to operate more efficiently, plus the software sounds useful. I don't consider the difference in price that significant and would rather choose the better service. I feel like one of these probably is a better choice but I'm finding it difficult to evaluate which it is. I would appreciate your thoughts and advice! Thank you.

I'm thinking that any future property I purchase should be in a Ltd company structure. The only thing I don't like is that anyone would be able to look my name up online and see that I own a property investment company and how much it is worth. I don't mind a lawyer being able to find what I own, I'm just not sure I'm comfortable with my friends and colleagues being able to look me up and say "ooh they're worth £X". Not least because they might not even understand what they're looking at, and possible think I'm far wealthier than I am 😆 Furthermore, there seems to be resentment towards landlords which other investors don't have to suffer. I don't suppose there is any practical way anyway around this..? Also, for the Ltd company's registered address, I was thinking of using a 'virtual trading address' such as those that UKpostbox offer, just so I don't have to give my home address to tenants. Is this something others are using? Thanks!

It's no secret that leveraged property investment has been very lucrative in recent decades, but people have been made bankrupt as well, especially in 2008. I'm trying to get to grips with how people with larger portfolios sleep at night with lots of mortgage debt to their name. Let's say I have one Buy-To-Let worth £200k with £150k debt against it and it's held in an SPV with a 20% personal guarantee (PG). The most I can lose personally is 20% of debt, so £30k. This isn't too scary, unless I've spent all my money it probably won't bankrupt me and it's not an insurmountable amount of money to rebuild. Anyone hoping to grow big though is going to one day end up with much more debt than this, perhaps they will end up with 20 of the same property, worth a total of £4M with £3M debt and the same 20% PG. Now they are personally liable for up to £600k! That's a much scarier amount. I can think of a few ways investors might justify these risks and I'd be interested to get your thoughts. A) prices will never fall more than 25% and so negative equity will never occur, and if the property needs remortaging at this price (which won't be possible without putting new money in because of the new value) then it can be easily sold to cover the debt. B ) before prices get anywhere near dropping by 25%, the government will step in to support the housing market C) The investor has sufficient other assets to cover any insolvency in their property portfolio I get the impression that a lot of people are either not thinking about this risk or thinking of A and B. In my eyes at the moment, only C is really that safe. If the properties are held personally or with a larger PG, then much more is at risk. As an investor grows their portfolio, they might be under the impression that they are unstoppable, but if they keep up a mortgage LTV of 75% across their portfolio, they are no more safe against bankruptcy than someone with a single property, and in fact have more to lose. Please let me know what you think, do you have a way to mitigate against these risks? Am I missing something? Thanks

Hi everyone, I'm considering using the "all in" SPV Limited Company creation & management services of https://www.getground.co.uk/, which appears to offer a very attractive bundled deal of company incorporation, all filings and even company financial management... They look legit, backed by the land registry etc. Has anyone else used this service? Keen to know if there are any drawbacks or negative experiences others have had. Thanks Dave

While it seems common place to refinance properties owned in an SPV and use the proceeds to fund the deposit on further properties, what options are there to access that equity if one doesn't want to grow there property portfolio any further..? Since equity released by refinancing is not a profit, I imagine it is therefore impossible to extract the equity through dividends - one would instead have to sell a property and record a profit?? This seems like a significant drawback to me compared to owning property in my own name, considering that I don't intend to just forever buy more and more property... (but might want to buy enough to otherwise make an SPV worthwhile..) Looking forward to hearing what people have to say on this. Thanks in advance!

Hi All Please can you help, I need advice here to let me know what options I have available to me. I would like to sell my current residential home to a limited company (SPV) and turn it into a BTL property and buy another residential home with my wife. The long term plan is to purchase a few more BTL properties within the next 5 - 10 years using the limited company. I’m also a higher rate tax earner and intend to use this company just to build a portfolio of properties over time and have no intention to draw any income from the company in the medium term. My current property is valued at £600k, I have 40% equity in it and should be able to rent it out for around £2,100 pcm. Am I right with the below assumptions I am making? When I sell my current property, the Limited Company will pay stamp duty of £38k There is no capital gain tax for me to pay because I’m selling my current residential home to the company at current market value of the property. The property has never been rented out and never had a buy to let mortgage. Just standard residential mortgage. Because I’m buying another residential home at the same time as selling my current residential home to my limited company, I only need to pay the normal stamp duty rates and not the second home surcharge. When I sell my property to the limited company I can use the equity in my property as a deposit (assuming I can get a BTL mortgage approved) via a directors loan, meaning no money needs to change hands/accounts. If these assumptions are correct, the questions I have are around the directors loan and new BLT mortgage. Would I be able to keep my current mortgage with a consent to let or is it better to get a new BTL mortgage which is interest only allowing me to take out some equity from the property? For example get a 75% ltv mortgage With the directors loan is there any personal tax implications for me if I keep the loan on going for longer than a year or do I need to charge interest to the company on the loan? Am I able to close out the loan in the future with out having to pay any tax? Is my thought process and calculations correct here? Is there anything else I need to consider/know about?

Hi all, Whilst not new to the BTL scene, this year I purchased my first property inside SPV / Ltd Company and as I approach the final quarter of the company accounting year, it is about time to find an accountant to take on the new area of end of year filing activities!! I would like to consider myself pretty savvy in general numbers and tax game having filed my personal SA returns for many years but the company accounts games is a whole new story that I am looking for help with. I would be happy to do my own double entry bookkeeping and provide my chosen accountant with access to my online books from which to do these annual tasks - or if they prefer to operate a different way, I am open to discussion. I have had a few sensible quotes (and a few silly ones) when researching "general" accountants at the start of this journey but before I take a decision in this fairly niche market, I wanted to post here looking for recommendations of accountants known to operate in SPV/Ltd Companies. I live in Hampshire but I am as happy working with a nationwide accountant as I am a local one. Any help would be much appreciated guys with this my first post within the property hub network. Feel free the message me or reply on this thread. Thanks in advance. Dean

Hi, I'm an IT contractor working through my own limited company. This company has surplus profits from which I would like to invest in property. I've been advised by my accountant to set-up a new LTD company to do this with. I've been advised that I can then loan money to the new property investment company from my existing limited company. Does anyone know whether I need to produce a formal loan agreement for this? My accountant has said no , but that doesn't feel right to me. Surely the particulars of the loan would need to be documented, even if I am owner of both companies? Thanks, Jit

Hi my name is Craig, Excited to be a part of this group. I am looking to get into property investment with my two business partners. The aim would be to invest profits from our current business into property and reap the rewards over time (rental income and capital growth). Has anyone got experience or good information regarding investing company profits into either an SPV or Holding company in order to buy properties? It would be great to here if someone has already done this within the group and had success and the tax benefits. Equally if someone thinks that doing it this way rather than using my own savings to invest in property then happy to hear those thoughts. Many thanks in advance

Morning All, Just in the process of selling my first flip and now looking to move towards the BTL investment route. My plan will most likely involve carrying out works to these BTLs to increase the market value. The question I have - When creating a company, am I okay to just have 1 SPV Ltd company to buy, carry out refurb works, refinance with BTL mortgages and also hold the properties. Or will I need to form a parent company that specialises in carrying out the refurb works on the properties held in a separate SPV? Thanks. Alex

Hello! That’s my first post and I’m looking for strategy advice. Here’s a little background to my story. Together with my wife we are planning to buy our first investment property by the end of this year. We live in Bristol and plan to buy in Liverpool a 3 bedroom house and renting rooms ideally around £400 each. We have £10k savings and we can have another 10k by November. In August we are going to remortgage our residential property releasing potentially up to £20k. Our main plan is to become financially independent as soon as possible. I earn 35k and my wife 13k with little prospect for any of us for promotion and pushing us into a higher tax band My first question is: would it be wise to invest most of our savings and convert our loft into a 3rd bedroom hoping to increase value of our residential by 30-40k property and releasing more equity in August? My second question is should we buy the house for ourselves or as ltd keeping in mind that gradually as our portfolio builds up we’d like to slow down with investing and live off the money from rent. Many thanks for all your answers!

Hi everyone, I am buying a property using a limited company. The limited company is set up but I need to open a bank account (this is a lender requirement). I am an expat and am the sole director of the company. Any advice on decent business accounts - low fees, online banking and most importantly available for an expat! As always, any advice gratefully received. Cheers, JJ

Hello all, I am looking to start my property investment journey, but I'm hoping someone might be able to advise me about the affect of SPV purchasing on your status as a first time buyer. If I buy a BTL property as the director of a SPV, would I still count as a first time buyer when I come to buying my own house? Would I be able to use my LISA when buying my own home outside of the SPV? Thanks in advance for any help and/or advice.

Please help: Cladding prisoner looking for cost effective way to move house! Background: Currently I own a flat (Leasehold) in East London and live there with my partner and our 8month old son. It was purchased off plan in 2015 and we have lived in it since construction was completed. Last year we tried to do an equity release on the flat to fund an onward purchase and were told by the lender they couldn’t do this without an EWS1 form. We lobbied our Freeholder (Peabody) and 8 months later the block recently had a Fire Safety inspection for an EWS1 Form and received a B2 rating, meaning that remediation is required to make it EWS1 ‘compliant’. Whilst remediation work remains outstanding, no lenders will lend against the building. This means leaseholders are unable to sell their properties to prospective buyers who require a mortgage to complete a purchase essentially rendering Leaseholders mortgage prisoners. If we are to believe reports in the press, these issues will take years to remediate (5+ years), meaning we are unable to sell our homes until they are remediated. The building is not ACM clad, and the scale of the remediation work that will be required is unclear since the Freeholder (Peabody) is withholding the Fire Safety Report accompanying the EWS1. The Freeholders justification for withholding the report is that it is subject to ‘legal privilege’ as they are pursuing the Developer (Bellway) for the costs of remediation on the grounds of a ‘design defect’. This is a contentious issue, as leaseholders believe the report is not subject to Legal Privilege. Currently, Leaseholders have no visibility on how safe their flats are to live in nor any visibility of potential costs of remediation that may ultimately passed on to them by the Freeholders. Reports in the press state these could be as high as £75K per leaseholder (source p64: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/901877/Draft_Building_Safety_Bill_Impact_Assessment_web.pdf Upon receipt of the failed EWS1 a ‘waking watch’ was installed in the building, costing £8k/per week. At this stage it remains unclear whether the Freeholder or Leaseholder will cover the cost of the waking watch. There are 58 flats in the block so the implications are severe. Proposed solution & questions We are a young family and are looking at the most effective way to move house working around the current constraint where we are unlikely to be able to sell our flat for years. Since we currently own the leasehold on the flat, if we try to purchase a further property we would be subject to the second rate stamp duty. Given it could take years (potentially 5+ years) lenders will lend against the flat and we would be able to sell it, there is a risk that if we were make an onward purchase we would not be able to reclaim the excess stamp duty on our second purchase. This would mean that we’d be paying this second home stamp as well as being on the hook for remediation costs for the building. There is also the additional risk that Rishi Sunak introduces CGT on property next year, so any remaining capital gain on the flat would be eroded. One option we are considering is selling the East London flat we own to a SPV Limited Company so that we are not subject to 2nd home stamp duty on our onward purchase. We would look to sell the Flat to the company at a value reflective of the fact the present value of the flat is far below the value of a comparable flat with a fire certificate. We understand the company would pay 3% Stamp Duty on the purchase on amounts <£500k in value. Other questions: Ø Would selling the leasehold to the SPV Limited company (owned by me), enable me to pursue an onward purchase with my partner without being subject to 2nd home stamp duty? Ø Does anyone know any other costs associated with running the SPV Limited Company? E.g. annual charges that we would be subject to that we might not be subject to if the property was privately held. Ø Are there any cost considerations we should take into account? Grateful for anyone that can provide any help guidance here. Would also be interested in speaking to anyone else in a similar position, ie trapped in home due to cladding legislation. Thanks in advance

Hi all, my partners and I are going in to the "flipping" and want to set up a limited company to do this, but I can't find if an SPV limited company is suitable for investors who want to flip/renovate properties to resell, rather than just buy to let. Do you have any ideas please gang? Many thanks in advance.

Hello All, I'm trying to get into the buy-to-let world. I don't own any properties (I rent), and I'm planning to buy properties through an SPV. I know normally lenders don't like first-time buy-to-lets, however, after speaking to a couple of brokers, they came back to me with literally 0 lenders. They said their lenders are not lending to first-time buyers through an SPV, at the moment. Do you have any broker to recommend for this case? Thank you!

Hello, I would like to start building up my portfolio of rental properties in an SPV format. I am keen to start contacting mortgage advisers to look for the best limited company BTL mortgage rates. Does anyone recommend a good mortgage advisor with experience of helping a newbie get into the market ? Thanks Camilla

Good evening, I apologise for how long winded I feel this may be. I feel like I am all over the spot and would appreciate the type of professionals that I could use to achieve my goals (accountant with experience in property investing, tax adviser etc) and even better specific companies who would be recommended. Ok, so I am currently a director of a ltd company which includes me and my senior director based in the North West. We have had a good few years business and have managed to survive lockdown with a reasonable pot of money in the business account. We have decided to take a proportion of the profits which I would like to use to start building a property portfolio. I continue to hover around the upper tax threshold and I am reluctant to take this as a dividend payment where it can be avoided. As I need cash, my thoughts are I could take the money as a directors loan and pay it back to the company until such a time I could stagger smaller dividend payments over the following years to manage tax efficiency? Or set up the SPV Ltd company now, loan the money from my current business to the new one and let the money sit there for 3 months at which time go for a mortgage? Am I right in assuming that regardless of the options above the mortgage lenders will see the money as a loan if they identify its source? My current accountant is reactive instead of proactive and I am reluctant to involve them in my new business. This has proven costly for me the last financial year in respect of a business car lease which resulted in a benefit on my tax return which put me significantly over the upper tax limit (without sounding like I am moaning, if I was advised on this I would have certainly taken the personal lease option). My plan is to set up a separate SPV Ltd company with my wife (lower rate tax payer) with an aim to acquire properties on a buy to let/buy to holiday let strategy (with a possible benefit of acquiring them on the way down in the potential coming recession). Over the next 5 years the minimum I wish to acquire is a tenanted BTL (where I remove as much of my additional investment out) then purchase and a BTL holiday let which my partner would manage as a holiday or corporate let (so that she can stop working/work only part time). I wish to obtain the Vanilla BTL first of all to act as an additional buffer for void periods with the holiday let. A golden egg would be to acquire a HMO as I regularly work with landlords to ensure fire safety standards are met within their premises and seeing the state of some of them I feel I could provide higher quality accommodation to meet the demand in my area. Ultimately, I wish to seek sound advice and put the right strategy in place to achieve my goal whilst being compliant and not doing anything illegal. Hopefully, this post hasn't resulted in you deciding to have an early night and I thank you in advance for any response.

Hi all, Have finally decided to go for property investing as a way to reach financial freedom. Considering recent tax changes and updated regulations in this space, I’m considering doing it all via an spv and planning to start it out with an HMO. I live in London but want to steer clear of it due to high prices. So I’m looking in the usual suspects, the likes of Man, Bir, Liv... I am looking to share my experience with you guys as I go, but would also appreciate to get yours as I’m pretty new to all of this and feel like I don’t even grasp 1/10 of this subject. Any advice anyone would provide right out the gate? Generally? Also, am I the only one who struggles with Rightmove and Zoopla inasmuch as they appear to have some amazing deals there but there’s always probably a catch? How to spot these things? What kind of things should we keep an eye out for. I have also struggled to find a good real estate agent for this. Thanks all, regards.

Hi Everyone, I am new to the forum and this is my first post. I wanted to ask for some advice when setting up and structuring a limited company. Let me explain my position so far... I currently own 1 buy to let property in my own name on a personal buy to let. This has been ticking over nicely the past few years and I am still very proud of this achievement. I have now set up a limited company SPV to buy investment property as we are all aware of the changes made which effect what you can claim as expenses versus what you now can't. Earlier this year this was all in place and I began the process of buying my first property through the Ltd company. All was well until I got to the end stages and I was required to sign a document in the presence of a solicitor that wasn't my own at the request of the mortgage company. At this point I was out of the country working (which is very frequent in my line of work) and couldn't complete this, therefore the deal fell through and I lost money through legal fees. The company is now dormant and I would like to appoint my father as someone who has the authority to sign paperwork on behalf of the company so I can make sure all is sorted and airtight in terms of the setup and structure to prevent this happening again. Is there a way to do this? If so how do I go about setting this up. I don't want to put any risk on my dad or rather I like to be able to explain to him what this would mean if he became associated before going ahead. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and any information, even a point in the right direction, would be greatly appreciated. Cheers! Stephen

Evening all, Just curious if there are any people on here who are employed but involved with SPV's I.e. Being a director/shareholder. I'm in the early stages of starting with a group of investors to buy property in the future, I've had some good advice here already and interested in setting up an SPV to make the process easier, I'm planning on setting up the SPV with all investors listed as directors with equal shares and we pay into an account monthly until the first purchase. I currently work in the construction industry as a site manager and the people I will be investing with, work in a variety of different roles from engineer, restaurant manager, quantity surveyor and council worker. Because an SPV is classed as a non trading company, if I'm right? can it still be seen as a conflict of interest with current employment, I've looked and my contract states to seek permission before doing anything which I will be doing this week, I just want to see if anyone else has had any similar experiences. Thanks in advance, Jamie

I have a Ltd property company for simple BTLs. I am looking at investing some surplus cash into peer to peer property funds. It would be preferable (from a tax perspective) to lend from my company and the company earns the interest. My accountant has indicated that this is fine. I wonder whether there may be adverse consequences from mortgage lenders if the Ltd company is engaged in this activity? Do any hubbers have experience of this?

Evening all, I have set up a LTD co with myself as only director and shareholder at the moment as it was easy to do by myself and should satisfy everything from a Lenders perspective looking at my earnings etc. I have no properties purchased through this SPV yet but want to crack on soon. I have a wife and 2 infant children. I would like to eventually pass on on the wealth created to my children when I pass away so my questions are?: whats the best way to do this? can I set them up as shareholders at this early age or wait until they're older? Would it be a massive issue to change the structure once properties have been purchased? If anyone could give me any recommendations or point me in the direction of someone who can that would be greatly appreciated Many thanks

If I sell my flat to the SPV, say for £450K and the SPV only has a cash balance of £400K, can the Solicitor actually complete on this sale? i.e. physically only £400K will change hands as it were. The remainder £50K will be shown as a Director's loan owed to me from my SPV LTD company. My accountant is OK with this however he isn't sure about whether the Solicitor can complete the sale without the whole value of £450K being transferred. 1) Has anyone actually done this and has it worked? If so, how e.g. did the Solicitor have to draw up a separate loan agreement so that the sale can go through? Any other ways of making this happen? 2) In the future, if the SPV then needs to take out a mortgage, will the outstanding loan from the SPV to me cause an issue with getting a mortgage? Thanks very much all.

Hello Everyone, I am in the process of setting up an SPV Ltd as an expat. Looking for advice on mortgages for British expats looking to borrow into an SPV for UK property? What are the time scales for approving an application? what sort of rates/fees am I looking at? Any advice is warmly welcomed!