Limited company buy to let mortgage: the SPV route, made simple

Vortex Finance is a whole-of-market broker, not a lender. We are not tied to any single bank. We compare the lenders who will lend to a limited company on your side of the table, map your interest cover ratio before you submit anything, and return indicative terms in 3 to 5 working days. There is no fee to find out what fits, and we refer the tax question to a specialist rather than guess it.

What a limited company buy to let mortgage is

A limited company buy to let mortgage funds a rental property that is owned by a company rather than by you personally. The company is the borrower and the legal owner; you are a director and shareholder. The rent belongs to the company, the mortgage sits in the company’s name, and profit is taxed under corporation tax rather than your personal income tax.

The product itself works like any other buy to let mortgage. It is underwritten mainly on the rent the property earns, through an interest cover ratio rather than your salary, and most products are interest-only. What changes is who borrows, how the interest is treated for tax, and which lenders will look at the case. That last point is where a broker earns its place, because the panel of lenders who lend to companies is narrower than the personal market.

Why landlords use a limited company: Section 24

The driver behind the shift to companies is Section 24. For a personally held buy to let, you can no longer deduct your mortgage interest as a cost before tax. Instead you get a 20% basic-rate tax credit on finance costs. If you are a higher-rate taxpayer, that leaves you paying tax on rental income you never actually keep, because the relief no longer matches the rate you pay.

A company is treated differently. It deducts mortgage interest in full as a business cost against corporation tax, the way any business deducts the cost of its borrowing. For a higher-rate landlord with a sizeable mortgage, that difference can be the whole reason the numbers work. It is not a blanket win, though — extracting profit from the company as dividends carries its own tax, and the structure suits a hold-and-grow plan more than a quick sale. Our guides to Section 24 and property incorporation set out the trade-off in detail, and we always refer the tax decision to a specialist.

What an SPV is, and the SIC codes lenders want

An SPV, or special purpose vehicle, is a limited company set up solely to hold and let property. It trades in nothing else. Lenders strongly prefer a clean SPV over a company that also runs an unrelated business, because the underwriting is simpler and the company exists only for the property securing the loan. Lend to a trading company and the lender has to weigh risks from a business that has nothing to do with the rent.

Lenders check Companies House to confirm the company is set up the right way, and they look at the SIC code — the standard industrial classification that describes what a company does. The property SIC codes are:

Your accountant sets the SIC codes when the company is formed. If they do not match a property-holding purpose, an application can stall, so we check this before anything goes to a lender.

How limited company lending differs from personal buy to let

Four things tend to differ when the borrower is a company rather than an individual, and each one matters to how the case is placed.

The rate is usually a touch higher. Indicative limited-company buy to let rates typically run around 0.2% to 0.5% above the equivalent personal product. The gap reflects the narrower lender panel and slightly more involved underwriting, not a different kind of mortgage.

The ICR test is often more generous. Company borrowers are commonly stressed at a 125% interest cover ratio, where a higher-rate individual is usually tested at 145%. Because the test is gentler, the same rent can support a larger loan inside a company — one of the quieter advantages of the structure.

Directors usually give a personal guarantee. A new SPV has no track record or assets of its own, so most lenders require personal guarantees from the directors. It is standard, not a red flag, and we tell you exactly what each lender asks for.

The lender panel is narrower. Fewer lenders lend to companies than to individuals, and their rules vary widely on guarantees, director count and SIC codes. This is precisely why a whole-of-market broker matters more here than on a personal case: the right SPV-friendly lender first time avoids a wasted credit search.

Here is a worked example of the ICR advantage. A property renting at £1,500 a month produces £18,000 a year. Tested at a 125% ICR and a 5.5% stress rate, that rent supports a loan of roughly £262,000 through a company. The same property held personally by a higher-rate taxpayer, stressed at 145%, supports closer to £226,000. The company route allows around £36,000 more borrowing on identical rent — before you even reach the Section 24 tax difference. We map this for your actual figures before you submit.

Moving existing property into a company: the SDLT and CGT cost

If you already own buy to lets personally, transferring them into a company is not a simple re-titling. In the eyes of HMRC it is a sale from you to the company, even though you control both sides. That sale can trigger two charges. Capital gains tax may be due on the gain since you bought the property, and stamp duty land tax is payable by the company on the value transferred, usually at the higher rates for additional property.

There are reliefs that can reduce or defer this in limited circumstances — incorporation relief on the capital gains side, and SDLT partnership relief where a genuine partnership exists — but they are not automatic and the qualifying conditions are strict. Only an accountant can confirm whether you qualify. Our guides to the stamp duty on a limited company purchase and capital gains tax on property set out the figures, and the message is the same on both: weigh the one-off cost of incorporating against the long-term saving before you move anything.

For new purchases, none of this applies — the company simply buys the property from the outset, which is why many landlords run new acquisitions through an SPV and leave existing personal holdings where they are. We arrange the lending either way and let the accountant settle the tax.

How Vortex arranges your SPV mortgage

We match your case to the lenders who lend to companies and whose stress test, guarantee rules and SIC-code requirements fit your situation, across the whole market. We model the interest cover ratio before submission so you know what passes. We package the file the way a company case needs to be packaged, and we refer the tax question to a specialist so the structure decision is made on full information rather than a guess.

Indicative limited-company buy to let rates currently run around 4.7% to 6.7% a year, with maximum loan-to-value typically 65% to 75%. Those figures move with the market and the final terms are confirmed by the lender on application. There is no charge to get indicative terms, a lender shortlist or a stress-test assessment.

Common questions

All rates, loan-to-values and timescales above are indicative and current to June 2026. The lender confirms the final terms on application, once it has seen the property and your file. Tax treatment depends on your circumstances and should be confirmed with a qualified accountant. Vortex Finance is a broker, not a lender.