Limited company buy to let refinance is the process of remortgaging a rental property that is already owned by a special purpose vehicle, or moving borrowing to a company structure as part of wider portfolio planning, and it works differently to refinancing in your own name because lenders, pricing and affordability tests are built around company accounts and director guarantees rather than personal income. Limited company buy to let refinance has become the default route for landlords building portfolios of more than one or two properties, largely because of how personal tax relief on mortgage interest has been restricted since 2017.
If you already hold property personally and are weighing up whether to move it into a company, this article covers the practical mechanics of refinancing within a limited company structure, not the decision of whether incorporation itself makes financial sense. That second question sits firmly with an accountant, and we will come back to why. If you're instead looking to pull cash out of an existing rental to fund your next purchase, our guide on releasing equity from a rental property covers that process in more detail.
We deal with enquiries on this topic most weeks, and the pattern is usually the same. A landlord has built up two, three or four properties inside an SPV over several years, the original fixed rates are coming to an end, and they want to know whether they are getting a fair deal before they let the lender roll them onto a reversion rate. In most cases they are not, simply because they have never had the structure properly shopped across the wider limited company lending market.
The other common starting point is a landlord who already owns property personally, has heard that incorporating saves tax, and wants to know how quickly they can refinance once the property sits in a company. The honest answer is that this isn't a refinance at all in the way most people mean it, and we'll explain exactly why further down. Getting that distinction clear early saves a lot of wasted time later.
There's also a third group we speak to fairly often, and it's growing. These are landlords who set up an SPV some years ago on a buy-to-let mortgage that is now reaching the end of its fixed term, but who have never actually spoken to a broker about the refinance itself. They've simply had a renewal letter from the existing lender and assumed that's the market rate. It rarely is, and the gap between a lender's own retention offer and what's available across the wider SPV panel can easily run to half a percent or more on the rate alone. In fact, knowing when to start your buy to let remortgage is often the single biggest factor in avoiding that reversion rate altogether.
Over a five-year fix on a £400,000 loan, half a percent sounds small until you put a number on it. It works out at roughly £2,000 a year in extra interest, which over the life of a five-year deal is close to £10,000 that could otherwise have stayed in the business or funded another deposit. That's before accounting for any arrangement fee differences between the two offers, which can add or subtract several thousand pounds either way depending on the lender.
What this means in practice
In practice, limited company buy to let refinance means the mortgage sits against a company, usually a special purpose vehicle set up solely to hold property, rather than against you as an individual. The company is the legal owner, the company is named on the mortgage, and the company's accounts are what the lender scrutinises when assessing the loan.
Most lenders active in this space insist on an SPV structure using SIC codes specific to property investment, typically 68100, 68209 or 68320. A trading company that also happens to own a rental flat will struggle to get competitive terms, because lenders want a clean legal and accounting structure with no other business activity muddying the risk picture.
What catches people out is assuming that refinancing a company-owned property is simply a company version of a personal remortgage. It isn't. The lender panel is smaller, the fees tend to be higher, and the paperwork is heavier. You'll be asked for certified accounts, sometimes projected accounts if the SPV is newly formed, and full details of every director and shareholder with 20% or more interest in the company.
One thing worth being clear on from the outset: if the property you want to refinance is currently owned by you personally and you want it inside a limited company, that is not a refinance at all. It is a sale from you to the company, followed by a new mortgage in the company's name. That transaction triggers stamp duty land tax on the purchase and potentially capital gains tax on the disposal, calculated against current market value rather than the price you originally paid. This is squarely an accountancy and tax planning question, and no broker worth using will pretend otherwise.
To put some rough figures on that, a £300,000 property transferred into a company would typically attract stamp duty at the standard residential rates plus the 3% (now higher, depending on current rates at the time) surcharge for additional properties, because a company purchasing a residential investment property is treated the same way as an individual buying a second home. On a £300,000 transfer that can mean a stamp duty bill in the region of £14,000 to £17,000 depending on the exact rates in force, purely as a cost of moving the asset, before any capital gains tax on the uplift in value since purchase is even considered.
This is precisely why we always ask landlords to speak to their accountant first when incorporation is on the table. A broker can tell you what a lender will offer once the property sits in a company. Only an accountant can tell you whether the tax cost of getting it there is worth paying, and that calculation depends heavily on your personal tax bracket, how many properties you hold, and your long-term plans for the portfolio. If you're ready to see what's available once the numbers stack up, you can speak to our refinance team with our team.
It's worth adding some context on why so many landlords are asking this question in the first place. Since April 2017, individuals have gradually lost the ability to deduct mortgage interest from rental income before calculating tax, and instead receive only a basic rate tax credit on that interest. For a higher rate taxpayer with significant borrowing, this can mean paying tax on income that was effectively eaten up by mortgage interest, which is a very different position to how companies are taxed, since a limited company can still deduct mortgage interest as a normal business expense before corporation tax is calculated.
That difference is precisely why incorporation has become such a live topic, but it's also why the decision needs proper modelling rather than a rule of thumb. A landlord with one property and modest borrowing may find the stamp duty and capital gains cost of incorporating far outweighs any ongoing tax saving, whereas a landlord with a larger, highly geared portfolio and plans to keep expanding may find the numbers work firmly in favour of a company structure. There is no single answer that applies across the board, which is exactly why this sits with an accountant rather than a broker.
How it works
The mechanics follow a broadly similar shape to any buy to let refinance, but with extra layers of underwriting. The lender values the property, checks the rental income against its own stress test, reviews the company's financial position, and takes personal guarantees from the directors before releasing funds.
Lenders in this space split roughly into two camps: specialist buy to let lenders who have built SPV products alongside their personal-name range, and challenger banks or building societies who focus heavily, sometimes exclusively, on limited company lending. Pricing and criteria can vary more between these lenders than you would expect, which is exactly why panel access matters when you're shopping for rates.
As a rough guide on pricing, five-year fixed rates for limited company buy to let in a reasonably strong case, say 65-70% loan to value with clean accounts and good rental cover, have typically sat somewhere in the 5% to 6% range over recent periods, with two-year fixes often priced slightly higher to reflect the shorter commitment. These numbers move constantly with swap rates and base rate expectations, so treat them as a starting point for conversation rather than a quote, and always ask a broker for live pricing before making decisions based on figures you've seen online.
Arrangement fees also tend to run higher than personal buy to let, often 1.5% to 2% of the loan amount rather than a flat fee, though some lenders offer a lower percentage fee in exchange for a slightly higher rate. Whether to add the fee to the loan or pay it upfront is a genuine decision worth modelling properly, particularly on larger loans where 2% can easily run to several thousand pounds.
To make that trade-off more concrete, on a £350,000 loan a 2% fee works out at £7,000, against perhaps a 1% fee of £3,500 paired with a rate that's typically 0.2% to 0.3% higher. Over a five-year fixed term, that rate difference costs somewhere in the region of £3,500 to £5,000 in extra interest, which can mean the higher-fee, lower-rate option actually works out cheaper overall, depending on exactly how long the loan is held and whether it's repaid early. This is the kind of calculation a broker should be running for you as a matter of course, not something you should need to work out from a product brochure yourself.
Almost universally, lenders will require a personal guarantee from each director holding a meaningful shareholding, usually anyone above 20-25%. This is not negotiable with the vast majority of lenders and it surprises first-time company landlords every time. The guarantee means that if the company defaults, the lender can pursue the individual directors personally, which rather undercuts the idea that limited company ownership ring-fences personal liability. It doesn't, not for the mortgage debt itself.
Rental income assessment also differs. Lenders apply an Interest Coverage Ratio, commonly abbreviated ICR, which compares rental income to the mortgage payment at a stressed interest rate. For limited company borrowers this stress rate is often slightly more lenient than for higher-rate personal taxpayers, because the company doesn't suffer the same restriction on offsetting mortgage interest against tax. Typical ICR requirements sit around 125% for basic rate equivalent treatment, though many lenders apply this uniformly to company borrowers regardless of the directors' personal tax position.
To illustrate how that plays out in practice, on a mortgage balance of £200,000 at a stressed rate of around 7%, the notional annual interest figure the lender tests against is £14,000. At a 125% ICR requirement, the property would need to generate at least £17,500 a year in rent, or roughly £1,460 a month, before the lender is comfortable. Landlords are often surprised that the test uses a stressed rate well above the actual pay rate on the mortgage, but this is standard practice across almost the entire buy to let market, not something specific to limited company lending.
It's worth stress testing a couple of other loan sizes too, since the same percentage requirement scales quite differently depending on the balance involved. On a smaller £120,000 mortgage at the same 7% stress rate, the notional annual interest is £8,400, meaning rent of at least £10,500 a year, or around £875 a month, is needed to clear a 125% ICR. On a larger £500,000 facility, the same maths pushes the required rent up to roughly £43,750 a year, or £3,645 a month, which is a useful reminder that bigger refinances need genuinely strong rental yields to clear the bar, not just a higher property value.
Valuation, legal work and completion then proceed much as they would for any secured lending, though legal fees are usually higher because the solicitor has to review the company's structure, its articles of association, and confirm the directors have authority to borrow on the company's behalf. Budgeting £800 to £1,500 in legal costs for a single property refinance within a company is a reasonable starting point, with multi-title cases costing more because of the extra title checks involved.
Valuation fees follow a similar pattern to personal buy to let, usually based on the property value and paid either upfront or added to the loan, though some lenders offer free valuations as part of a product incentive. It's worth asking your broker to check whether a free valuation deal stacks up better overall once the rate and fee are factored in, because the headline saving isn't always the best outcome once the full cost is compared.
One other practical point worth flagging is around bank accounts and how rental income is actually received and recorded. Lenders expect to see rent paid into a dedicated company bank account, not into a director's personal account and then moved across later, because the latter makes it far harder for an underwriter to verify income cleanly against bank statements. If your SPV doesn't yet have its own business bank account, getting one set up well before you approach a lender is a simple step that avoids unnecessary back and forth during underwriting.
Typical scenarios
The scenario below is illustrative - a composite example reflecting the shape of deals of this kind, not a specific, identifiable transaction. Consider a landlord in Preston who owns three buy to let properties through an SPV set up four years ago, each currently on a five-year fixed rate due to expire within the next two months.
The portfolio is valued at a combined £640,000, with existing company borrowing of £390,000 across the three properties, putting the blended loan to value at around 61%. The landlord wants to refinance onto new five-year fixed products, release a modest amount of additional capital against the strongest-performing property to fund a deposit on a fourth purchase, and consolidate the three mortgages with a single lender where possible to simplify the accounts.
A lender reviewing this case would want two years of filed company accounts, current rental statements for all three properties, an up to date valuation on each, and personal guarantees signed by both directors, who are a married couple each holding 50% of the shares. Assuming rental income comfortably clears the stress test and the accounts show no concerning trends, a realistic loan to value for the refinance plus capital raise would sit around 70-75%, with the new borrowing totalling roughly £460,000.
Working through the numbers a little further, that £460,000 of new borrowing against £640,000 of value leaves roughly £180,000 of equity retained in the portfolio, while the capital raised above the existing £390,000 balance, around £70,000, gives the landlord a meaningful deposit towards a fourth property priced somewhere in the £280,000 to £320,000 range, assuming a 75% loan to value purchase on the new acquisition. This is a fairly typical way landlords use refinance proceeds to keep expanding without injecting fresh personal cash into the business.
From initial application to funds released, a case of this shape typically takes between four and six weeks, allowing for valuation instructions, underwriting review of three years of rental history, and legal completion across multiple titles. Landlords expecting a personal-mortgage-style turnaround of two weeks are usually disappointed, simply because there is more for the underwriter to check.
Breaking that four to six week window down a little further helps set realistic expectations. The first one to two weeks are typically spent gathering documents, instructing valuations and getting the application formally submitted. Underwriting review, including any queries that come back on the accounts or rental evidence, often takes a further two weeks, with legal work running partly in parallel once an offer is issued. The final stage, from formal mortgage offer to completion, usually takes a further one to two weeks, depending on how quickly the solicitors on both sides turn around the paperwork.
A second, shorter scenario worth mentioning involves a single-property SPV in Leeds, where the director has only recently incorporated and has one year of filed accounts. Here the lender pool narrows considerably, because many lenders want a minimum of two years' trading history for the company itself, even though the property may have been let for longer under previous personal ownership. In cases like this a broker's job is largely about identifying which of the smaller number of lenders will accept a newer SPV, rather than chasing the headline rate from a lender who will decline the case outright.
In that Leeds example, the property itself is worth £185,000 with existing borrowing of £120,000, putting the loan to value at around 65%. Despite the strong equity position, several mainstream SPV lenders simply won't consider the case because of the limited trading history, regardless of how clean the single year of accounts looks. A broker working this case would typically narrow the search to four or five lenders known to accept newer SPVs, rather than approaching the twenty or so lenders who might otherwise be considered for an established company, which saves considerable time and avoids unnecessary declines showing up on the company's credit file.
A third scenario, worth mentioning briefly because it comes up more than people expect, involves a landlord looking to refinance a single SPV property to release capital for a non-property purpose, such as funding a renovation project elsewhere or consolidating other business borrowing. Lenders are generally far more cautious here, since the loan is secured against a buy to let property but the funds aren't being used to grow the letting business itself. Expect closer questioning on exactly what the capital will be used for, and in some cases a lower maximum loan to value than would be offered for a straightforward like-for-like refinance or portfolio expansion.
What lenders look for
Lenders assess limited company buy to let refinance applications against the property's rental income, the company's financial health, and the strength of the directors standing behind personal guarantees, with loan to value typically capped between 65% and 80% depending on property type and lender appetite.
On loan to value, expect standard houses and flats to achieve up to 75-80% with the right lender, while houses in multiple occupation, new build flats and ex-local authority stock are frequently capped lower, often 65-70%. Holiday lets and short-term let properties held in a company structure face an even smaller lender pool and tighter LTV limits, generally reflecting the less predictable income pattern lenders associate with that type of letting.
On timescales, a straightforward single-property refinance with clean accounts can complete in three to four weeks. Multi-property portfolios, newly incorporated SPVs with only one year of accounts, or cases involving a change of use or recent refurbishment tend to run closer to six to eight weeks, mainly because underwriters want more evidence before committing.
Acceptable security is almost always a standard first charge over the property itself, held within the SPV. Second charge lending against company-owned buy to lets exists but the panel is thin and pricing reflects the limited competition. Lenders want to see the company owns nothing except investment property, has no other secured debt complicating the charge register, and that the rental income is independently verifiable through tenancy agreements or letting agent statements rather than just the landlord's word.
Beyond the headline criteria, underwriters also pay close attention to the age and experience of the directors as landlords, sometimes referred to as portfolio landlord status once a borrower holds four or more mortgaged buy to let properties anywhere, whether personally or through a company. Portfolio landlords face an additional layer of underwriting under Prudential Regulation Authority guidance, where the lender must assess the whole portfolio's income and borrowing, not just the single property being refinanced. This means a spreadsheet showing every property, its value, its mortgage balance and its rental income is almost always requested once a landlord crosses that four-property threshold.
On exit, for a refinance this usually just means the new mortgage itself, so lenders focus more heavily on affordability than on an exit strategy in the bridging sense. The most common reasons applications in this space get declined are thin or inconsistent company accounts, directors who fail background and credit checks despite the company having a clean record, and rental income that fails to clear the ICR once the lender applies its own stress rate rather than the landlord's optimistic projection. A surprising number of declines also come down to SIC code mismatches, where the company was set up for general property activities rather than the specific investment code a lender requires.
It's also worth flagging that lenders differ in how they treat a director's existing personal buy to let borrowing when assessing a company application. Some lenders look purely at the company in isolation. Others want visibility of every property the director owns, whether through this company, another company, or personally, before forming a full picture of overall exposure. This is one of the areas where whole-of-market broker knowledge genuinely changes the outcome, because sending a case to the wrong type of lender wastes weeks and sometimes costs an abortive valuation fee.
Another area worth understanding is how lenders view multiple SPVs owned by the same directors. It's increasingly common for landlords to run two or three separate SPVs, often split by property type or by region, for accounting or liability reasons. Most lenders are comfortable with this, but will still want to see the director's full exposure across all the structures, since the personal guarantee follows the individual rather than any single company.
Credit scoring for the company itself also plays a part, even for a newly formed SPV with no trading history of its own. Lenders will check the company's record at Companies House, confirm there are no outstanding filings or warnings, and in many cases run a business credit check alongside the personal credit checks on each director. A dormant company accounts filing that's slightly overdue, even by a few days, can occasionally trigger extra questions during underwriting, so keeping on top of Companies House deadlines matters more than landlords often expect.
| Property type | Typical maximum LTV | Lender pool size |
|---|---|---|
| Standard house or flat | 75-80% | Wide |
| HMO (licensed) | 70-75% | Moderate |
| New build flat | 65-70% | Narrow |
| Holiday or short-term let | 65-70% | Narrow |
Common mistakes
The single most common mistake is landlords assuming their existing personal buy to let lender also offers competitive company terms, and simply asking that lender for a quote rather than shopping the wider market. Many high street names barely touch SPV lending, leaving landlords with one quote that looks expensive purely because it's being compared against nothing.
A second frequent error is setting up the SPV with the wrong SIC code, or with trading activity alongside the property holding, only to discover at application stage that half the lender panel won't touch the structure. Fixing this after the fact means amending company records at Companies House and waiting for that to register, which can delay a refinance by weeks.
Directors also regularly underestimate how thoroughly personal credit and background checks feature in company lending decisions. The company might have spotless accounts, but if a director has historic adverse credit or an undisclosed County Court Judgment, that can scupper the application regardless of how strong the property and rental numbers look. Full disclosure upfront avoids wasted valuation fees and wasted weeks.
Another mistake is treating incorporation as a quick administrative step rather than a full transaction with its own costs. Landlords sometimes approach a broker assuming the refinance will simply absorb the stamp duty and legal costs of moving a property into a company, without having budgeted separately for either, and are caught out when the true cost of restructuring becomes clear partway through the process.
Poor record keeping is another recurring issue, particularly with SPVs that have been dormant or lightly used for a year or two before the landlord decides to refinance or expand. Filed accounts that are overdue, or that show a confusing picture because the accountant has grouped rental income oddly, slow underwriting down considerably. It's worth asking your accountant well in advance of any refinance whether the latest set of accounts will present cleanly to a mortgage underwriter, rather than finding out from the lender after the event.
Finally, many landlords underestimate how much weight lenders place on the experience and track record of the directors themselves, not just the numbers on the page. A company with two directors who have each run buy to let portfolios for a decade will generally be viewed more favourably than an identical company run by first-time landlords, even where the accounts and rental figures look similar on paper. New landlords aren't locked out of the market by any means, but it helps to understand that lender appetite isn't purely mechanical, and a good broker will match the case to lenders who are genuinely comfortable with a newer landlord's profile rather than ones who will hesitate at the first sign of limited experience.
A less obvious mistake, but one we see fairly regularly, is leaving a refinance until the very last few weeks of the existing fixed rate. Given that a reasonably straightforward case can still take four to six weeks, and a more complex portfolio case can run to eight weeks, starting the process with only three weeks left on the current deal puts landlords at real risk of slipping onto a lender's standard variable rate, if only for a short period. Starting the conversation with a broker three to four months before the fixed rate ends gives enough breathing room to shop properly, deal with any underwriting queries, and still complete comfortably before the existing rate expires.
Taken together, these mistakes share a common thread. They nearly all stem from treating limited company buy to let refinance as a slightly different flavour of ordinary remortgaging, rather than as its own distinct corner of the lending market with its own rules, its own costs and its own panel of lenders. Getting ahead of that distinction, ideally before accounts are filed or an SPV is even incorporated, tends to save landlords both time and money once the refinance itself gets underway.
