Limited company buy-to-let mortgages, structured by people who used to write them.

How limited company buy-to-let lending works

A limited company buy-to-let mortgage is a loan to the company, secured on the property, with the directors standing behind it personally. The company is the legal borrower and registered proprietor; you are the covenant the lender is actually relying on. That single fact drives almost everything about how these cases are underwritten.

Lenders split corporate borrowers into two camps. A special purpose vehicle (SPV) is a company that exists solely to hold and let property, with no other trade. This is what the vast majority of BTL lenders want to see, and it is identified by the SIC codes registered at Companies House: 68209 (letting and operating of own or leased real estate) or 68100 (buying and selling of own real estate). A trading company, anything from a plumbing firm to a consultancy that happens to want a rental property on its balance sheet, faces a much smaller lender pool, usually two years of filed accounts as a minimum, and underwriting of the trade itself alongside the property.

If you are buying through a company, the clean route is an SPV with the right SIC codes, a simple share structure and the directors as shareholders. Get that right at incorporation and the lending side becomes straightforward. Get it wrong, a trading SIC code, an odd share class, a corporate shareholder nobody mentioned, and cases stall at underwriting for weeks. The vehicle itself, and how to set one up properly, is covered in detail on our SPV mortgages page.

Personal guarantees, debentures and floating charges

The company has limited liability, so the lender reaches through it. Expect a full personal guarantee from every director, and from shareholders above roughly 20% to 25% of the equity. The guarantee makes you personally liable for the debt if the company defaults, which is why every lender requires you to take independent legal advice before signing it. Budget £300 to £500 per guarantor for that advice and do not treat it as a formality.

Some lenders go further and take a debenture, a fixed and floating charge over everything the company owns, not just the mortgaged property. That matters if the same company holds other assets or you plan to raise second-charge finance later, because the debenture holder controls consents. A minority of lenders will accept a guarantee capped at, say, 20% to 25% of the loan, and where guarantee exposure is a genuine concern, that is a placement criterion we filter on from day one.

The rate premium over personal name, and why it has narrowed

Limited company products have historically priced above personal-name equivalents, and they still do, but the gap has compressed hard. As of June 2026 the premium is typically 0.2% to 0.5%, and several specialist lenders now price SPV and personal-name business identically. Ten years ago you were paying a full point or more for the privilege.

The reason is volume. Since the Section 24 mortgage interest restrictions bit in fully, limited company applications have grown to the majority of new BTL purchase lending, and lenders who priced the product as a niche lost share to those who priced it as the mainstream. Specialist lenders compete primarily on company business now, so the premium reflects genuine extra cost, legal work on guarantees and company checks, rather than scarcity. For a higher-rate taxpayer, the ability to deduct mortgage interest in full against rental income inside the company usually outweighs a 0.3% rate premium several times over, and that is before the leverage advantage below.

The ICR advantage: why a company borrows more

Lenders size BTL loans on the interest cover ratio, the rent divided by the stressed mortgage interest. The standard thresholds are 125% for limited companies and basic-rate taxpayers, and 145% for higher-rate taxpayers borrowing in personal name, because the lender has to allow for the tax leakage on personal rental income. Stress rates are typically pay-rate plus 2% or a 5.5% floor, but most lenders test five-year fixed rates at the pay rate itself, which is why long fixes carry more leverage.

Here is what that means in cash, on a property renting at £1,500 per month (£18,000 a year), against a five-year fix tested at pay rate:

Even paying the full premium, the company borrows roughly £27,700 more against the same rent than the same person could in their own name, and nearly £37,800 more at matched rates. Across a five-property acquisition programme that difference compounds into an extra property. Run your own figures through our limited company vs personal calculator, and for the full tax comparison see our limited company vs personal name guide.

How to compare limited company buy-to-let mortgages

Comparison tables sorted by headline rate are close to useless for company lending, because the products that top them usually carry the heaviest fees. Four things actually decide what a product costs you:

• Rate and fee together. Lender arrangement fees on company products run from £0 to 7% of the loan. A 4.69% rate with a 5% fee is usually dearer over five years than 5.39% with a £1,495 fee. Always compare fees as a percentage of the loan, not as flat figures, and total the true cost over the fixed period.
• Early repayment charges. Five-year ERCs commonly step down 5-4-3-2-1. If there is any realistic chance you sell, refinance the portfolio or restructure the company inside the fix, the ERC schedule matters more than 0.1% on the rate.
• Stress basis. Two lenders at the same rate can offer wildly different loan sizes depending on whether they stress at pay rate, pay rate plus 2% or a 5.5% floor. If leverage is the constraint, the stress basis is the comparison.
• Criteria fit. The cheapest product is irrelevant if the lender will not accept your share structure, your deposit source or your holdco. Criteria kill more company cases than pricing does.

This is the comparison we run on every case: full panel, five-year cost including fees, sized against your actual rent and structure, not the structure the sourcing system assumes.

Limited company buy-to-let mortgage rates, June 2026

Indicative ranges across our panel as of June 2026, for a standard single-let held in a clean SPV. Standard personal-name five-year fixes are running 4.5% to 5.75%; company products sit 0.2% to 0.5% above the personal-name equivalent at most lenders, and level with it at some.

Lender arrangement fees range from £0 with a rate loading to 3% to 7% on the lowest headline rates. The right combination depends on loan size and how hard the ICR binds: large loans against tight rent often genuinely benefit from a high-fee, low-rate product because the lower pay rate unlocks the leverage.

New SPV, no accounts? That is the normal case

A persistent myth says a company needs two or three years of accounts before it can borrow. For SPV buy-to-let, the opposite is true: most lenders expect the company to be brand new, incorporated for the purchase, sometimes the same week as the application. There are no accounts to assess, so the underwriting moves entirely onto the people behind it. What lenders actually check:

• Director and shareholder credit. Full credit search on every guarantor. Historic blips are placeable; undisclosed ones are not.
• Landlord experience. First-time landlords have access to a decent lender pool; experienced landlords have the whole market. Experience held in personal name counts for the company.
• Deposit source. Director loan, savings, gifted funds, equity raised elsewhere or an intercompany loan from a trading business. All workable, all needing documentation, and the intercompany route needing the right lender from the outset.
• Personal income. Not used to size the loan, but most lenders want a minimum income, commonly £25,000, or evidence you can absorb voids.

Group structures and holding companies

At scale, many landlords move to a layered structure: a holding company owning one or more property SPVs, sometimes alongside a trading business. The structure has real advantages, ring-fencing, cleaner inheritance planning, dividends moving up the group without personal tax, but it cuts the lender pool. Some lenders will not accept a corporate shareholder at all; others accept a holdco but require personal guarantees from the individuals behind it and sight of the full group chart. A few underwrite genuinely complex groups, including offshore elements, at a pricing premium.

The practical rule: design the structure with the lending in mind, not after it. We regularly see landlords incorporate an elegant group on accountancy advice, then discover that two thirds of the market will not lend into it. If you are at that decision point, talk to us and your accountant in the same week. Structures involving four or more mortgaged properties also bring you into portfolio-landlord underwriting, covered on our portfolio mortgages page.

Moving an existing personal portfolio into a company

Transferring properties you already own into your company is a sale at full market value: stamp duty at the additional-property rates for the company, potential capital gains tax for you personally, and a complete refinance of every mortgaged property onto company products. For portfolios run as a genuine business, incorporation relief can defer the CGT, and partnership routes can mitigate the SDLT, but both are heavily fact-dependent and need specialist tax advice before anything moves.

Our role is the debt: modelling the new company-rate cost against the Section 24 saving, sequencing the refinances so you are never exposed on ERCs, and placing the portfolio with lenders who will take the whole book in one exercise. The mechanics, costs and sequencing are set out in our guide to transferring property into a limited company.

Frequently asked questions