SPV and Limited Company Buy to Let Mortgages 2026
An SPV mortgage is a buy-to-let mortgage made to a special purpose vehicle (SPV), a limited company set up only to hold and let property, rather than to an individual landlord. The company owns the property, the rent services the loan, and the directors give personal guarantees behind it. That single structural fact, that the borrower is a company and not a person, is what changes how SPV mortgages are priced, how they are stress-tested, and how the tax works, and it is why most new buy-to-let business in 2026 now comes through a company rather than a personal name.
If you have searched for an SPV mortgage, you are almost certainly weighing up a property investment through a limited company, or moving an existing rental across. This article is the plain-English explainer for how these mortgages actually work, what the benefits are, and where the rates on company mortgages sit in 2026. We arrange SPV and limited company buy-to-let mortgages across a whole-of-market panel of more than 100 lenders, including specialist names a borrower cannot approach directly, so we see how these mortgages are sized and priced every week. If you want to model the choice for your own properties before reading on, our SPV mortgage calculator compares the company route against personal-name borrowing side by side.
We will cover what an SPV is and why the SIC code matters, how lenders underwrite company buy-to-let mortgages on the 125% interest cover ratio, where loan to value and SPV mortgage rates sit, and which lenders are active in this market in 2026. The figures here are indicative market commentary for UK limited company and SPV mortgages, not quotes or offers, and the tax points are general information, not tax advice.
What is an SPV mortgage
Start with the definition, because the whole product follows from it. An SPV mortgage is a loan secured on a property that is owned by a special purpose vehicle (SPV), a company that exists for the single purpose of holding and letting that property. The company is the borrower. The property is the security. The rent is the income that services the debt. The directors, who are usually also the shareholders, stand behind the loan with personal guarantees. Nothing about the building, the tenant or the rent changes because the owner is a company rather than a person, but a great deal about the lending does, which is why SPV mortgages sit in their own corner of the market.
The reason this structure now dominates new buy-to-let is tax, and specifically Section 24. Tax relief on residential landlords’ finance costs was restricted to the basic rate of income tax, phased in from April 2017 and fully in place from April 2020, which means an individual landlord can no longer deduct mortgage interest from rental profit and instead receives only a basic-rate, 20%, tax reduction (HMRC, GOV.UK). Mortgage interest and other finance costs remain fully deductible for residential property held inside a limited company, which is what makes SPV mortgages attractive to higher-rate landlords. For a higher or additional-rate taxpayer, that difference is large enough to reshape the economics of a leveraged property investment, and it is why company mortgages have pulled ahead of personal-name ones for new business. The limited liability that a company gives its directors is part of the appeal for some landlords too, though the main draw is the tax treatment. Whether incorporating actually leaves you better off depends on your own income, your plans for the profit and the cost of running a company, and that is a calculation for a qualified accountant, not a lender. We are setting out the general picture, not giving tax advice.
The market has moved decisively in this direction, and most landlords now treat the company as the default wrapper for a new investment. Paragon Bank reported that 43% of mortgaged buy-to-let house purchases were completed through a limited company in 2025, up from 35% in 2024 and just 7.5% in 2018. Hamptons, analysing Companies House data, found a record 66,587 new buy-to-let companies were set up in 2025, taking the active register to 443,272, nearly five times the number recorded in 2016. Looking forward, Paragon research carried out by BVA BDRC found that 63% of landlords expect to make future property investments through an SPV, rising to every respondent in the 25 to 34 age group. Company buy-to-let is no longer a niche corner of the market. For most lenders these mortgages are now the core of the new-business pipeline.
An SPV mortgage is a loan made to a property-only company, secured on the property the company owns and serviced by the rent, with the directors standing behind it.
SIC codes 68100 and 68209, and why a clean SPV prices best
When a lender opens an SPV mortgage application, one of the first things it checks is how the company is set up at Companies House, and the SIC code is central to that. The SIC code is the standard industrial classification that tells the world what the company does. For a property-holding SPV, the two that matter are 68100, buying and selling of own real estate, and 68209, other letting and operating of own or leased real estate. A buy-to-let SPV should be coded to reflect that it holds and lets property, and 68209 is the code most lenders expect to see on a pure rental SPV, with 68100 read by some as closer to trading, development or flipping where the cashflows are less predictable. Most company mortgages are written against a company sitting in one of those two codes.
What lenders want above all is a clean special purpose vehicle: a company set up only to hold and let properties, with no trading activity, no other business and no complicated history. One of the practical advantages of a clean structure is the breadth of SPV mortgages it opens up, because almost every company lender will look at it. A brand-new company with no trading record is not a problem here, and is not penalised on rate or loan to value for being new, because there is nothing to unpick. The lender can read the structure, the directors and the property and get straight to pricing. A mixed trading company that also happens to hold a rental property is the harder case: it faces a smaller lender pool and more underwriting, because the lender has to understand the trading cashflows alongside the rent before it can lend against the property.
For larger holdings the structure question goes a step further. Landlords building a portfolio of properties often use several SPVs, sometimes under a holding company that sits above them, which affects how security is taken, how cross-default works and how flexible future refinancing will be. A portfolio landlord will frequently hold separate SPV mortgages against each company, so the way the portfolio is split shapes the lending from day one. Hamptons noted that 42% of the companies created in 2025 had more than one shareholder, up from 34% in 2016, which reflects more joint, family and group ownership. Getting the SIC code and the wider structure right before the first purchase saves re-papering the company later, and where shareholdings, control and succession are involved, those mechanics belong with an accountant and, where relevant, a solicitor.
How lenders underwrite company buy-to-let mortgages
A lender reads four things on an SPV mortgage application: the structure and SIC code, the directors and their personal guarantees, the property, and the rent. It then sizes the loan on the interest cover ratio, and this is where the company route earns its keep in the arithmetic.
The interest cover ratio, or ICR, is the test of whether the rent comfortably covers the mortgage interest at a stressed rate. For a limited company, buy-to-let is commonly stressed at 125%, meaning the rent has to cover 125% of the stressed interest. For a higher-rate individual borrower the equivalent test is usually 145%. That gap exists precisely because a company deducts its mortgage interest in full while a higher-rate individual does not, so the lender can apply a gentler cover requirement to the company and still be comfortable. The practical effect is real: against the same rent, a company can often support a larger loan than the same person could borrowing in their own name. This is one of the core benefits of the company route, and the single biggest reason the lending fork between company and personal name matters, separate from the tax point. It is exactly the kind of difference our SPV mortgage calculator is built to show, putting the company and personal-name borrowing figures next to each other on the same rent.
Sitting alongside the ICR is the stress rate, the notional interest rate the cover test is run at. In the current market most company mortgages are stressed somewhere around 5.5%, though it varies by lender and product. The important nuance is the fix: on a 5-year fixed rate, many lenders test the cover at or near the actual pay rate rather than at the full notional stress, on the logic that the borrower is protected from rate movements for five years. That lower test loosens the cover requirement and can release a meaningfully larger loan than a 2-year product would, which is why so many SPV mortgages are written on 5-year fixes. The Bank of England base rate is 3.75%, held since the December 2025 cut, and SPV mortgage rates are priced as a margin over a swap or reference rate, with products that are fee-loaded, so the headline rate and the arrangement fee have to be read together. Because fixed rates and tracker rates move with that reference rate, it pays to compare rates across several lenders rather than taking the first one offered.
Then come the personal guarantees, and this is the point at which limited liability has its limits. Because an SPV is usually a new or thinly capitalised company, the lender takes a personal guarantee from the directors, commonly for the full loan amount, sometimes capped at a proportion. This is the mechanism that puts the people behind the company on the hook, and it is why directors should understand exactly what they are signing, since the company’s limited liability does not shield them from the guarantee. Among the standard requirements, some lenders also apply a minimum director income floor, wanting to see that the people behind the company have income of their own. The deposit itself is typically introduced as a director’s loan into the company, money the directors lend in, which can later be drawn back out of company profits in a tax-efficient way. How and when that is done is, again, a question for an accountant rather than a lender. For HMOs and multi-unit blocks the same 125% test usually clears with far more headroom, because the loan is stressed against aggregate room rents rather than a single tenancy, which is why these properties often carry some of the largest SPV mortgages a portfolio holds.
SPV mortgage rates: LTV tiers and the premium over personal name
Loan to value on a clean SPV runs up to 75% in the mainstream market, and a handful of lenders will reach 80% on a rate premium. Within that ceiling, company mortgages price at tiers: 65%, 70% and 75% are the usual break points, with the best rates at the lower end and the rate rising as you push the loan to value up toward 75%. A new company is not penalised on loan to value for being new, though first-time landlords sometimes see a lender prefer 70% rather than the full 75% until there is a track record. The deposit, as above, comes in as a director’s loan, so the equity has to be there in cash one way or another, the company structure does not reduce the amount of capital the deal needs.
The other number every borrower asks about is the premium. Historically, company buy-to-let products have priced a little above the equivalent personal-name product, and the indicative gap in 2026 sits around 0.20% to 0.40%. That premium has narrowed as the company market has matured and as lenders have built dedicated SPV mortgage ranges, and some lenders now price company and personal products at or close to parity (market commentary, indicative; the often-cited historical range is around 0.2% to 0.5%). The key point for a higher-rate landlord is that this premium is usually outweighed by the benefit of full mortgage interest deductibility inside the company. Paying 0.30% more on the rate while deducting 100% of the mortgage interest, rather than receiving a 20% credit, generally nets out in the company’s favour, which is why the advantages of the structure tend to win out for a higher-rate property investment. But that is a combined tax-and-finance calculation, not a finance one alone, and the tax side belongs with an accountant who can model your specific position. Our SPV mortgage calculator sets out the finance side of that company-versus-personal comparison, letting you test different rates against your own rent so you can see the shape of it before you take advice.
Remortgaging works on the same arithmetic, and a large share of SPV mortgages we arrange are refinances rather than purchases. At deal expiry you can switch lender, take a product transfer with the existing one, or raise capital on the equity the company has built, all up to the same 75% cap. Because the loan is re-stressed at 125% on the current rent, any rent growth since purchase can unlock a larger loan on a refinance, and falling rates at the point of remortgage can lift borrowing further. This is worth flagging because remortgage conversion in the company market lags purchase: Paragon found 11.5% of completed buy-to-let remortgages went through a company in 2025, against 43% of purchases, the gap being that moving an existing personally-held property into a company is a taxed disposal rather than a clean new purchase, with capital gains tax and the SDLT additional-dwelling surcharge to consider. The SDLT additional-dwelling surcharge rose to 5%, from 3%, for transactions on or after 31 October 2024 (HMRC, GOV.UK). Whether incorporation relief or a partnership route changes that cost is squarely tax-advice territory and must be worked through with an accountant before anything moves.
Which lenders are active in SPV mortgages
The SPV mortgage market is well served, and we work across a whole-of-market panel of more than 100 lenders rather than a single provider, which matters more here than in most lending because a large part of the company buy-to-let market sits behind intermediaries. We will name lenders to show you the shape of the market, but we describe appetite and category, never a specific rate, because rates move constantly and are set case by case.
Among the specialist lenders active in clean-SPV buy-to-let, Paragon, Kent Reliance, Fleet Mortgages, Foundation Home Loans, Landbay and Precise Mortgages are long-standing names with deep appetite for SPV mortgages. These lenders built their mortgages around the company borrower and tend to be comfortable with new SPVs, 5-year fixes tested near pay rate, and the kind of portfolio structures a serious investment landlord uses. For more complex or larger deals, and for some remortgage and capital-raising work, challenger lenders such as Aldermore, Shawbrook, Interbay, LendInvest, Quantum Mortgages and Zephyr Homeloans bring appetite for the cases that fall outside the mainstream box, often with rates that reflect the extra work.
The reason a broker matters most in this market is the intermediary-only tier. Several of the most competitive company buy-to-let lenders, including The Mortgage Works, Leeds Building Society, Coventry Building Society, Metro Bank and Yorkshire Building Society, only accept business through intermediaries. A borrower cannot walk into a branch or apply direct for those SPV mortgages. That is not a sales line, it is simply how the market is structured: a meaningful share of the keenest company buy-to-let rates is only reachable through a broker, which is the whole point of using one. Our job is to model the company-versus-personal maths, run the ICR at the right stress for the structure, and then take the case to the lender whose appetite genuinely fits it, including the names you could never reach yourself.
FAQ
What is an SPV mortgage in simple terms? It is a buy-to-let mortgage made to a limited company that exists only to hold and let property, rather than to you personally. The company owns the property and borrows the money, the rent services the loan, and you give a personal guarantee as a director. SPV mortgages are the standard way most new buy-to-let property investment is now financed.
What SIC code should my SPV use? For a pure rental special purpose vehicle, lenders generally expect 68209, other letting and operating of own or leased real estate. 68100, buying and selling of own real estate, is read by some lenders as closer to trading or development. A clean, property-only company prices best, and a brand-new SPV with no trading history is not penalised for being new.
Why does a company get a 125% ICR when a personal landlord gets 145%? Because a company deducts its mortgage interest in full as a business cost, while a higher-rate individual landlord since April 2020 only receives a 20% tax credit on that mortgage interest. The lender reflects that by stressing the company at a gentler 125% interest cover, against 145% for a higher-rate person, which can let the company borrow more against the same rent. This is the core reason SPV mortgages can stretch further than a personal-name loan.
How much can I borrow on an SPV mortgage? Up to 75% of value on a clean SPV in the mainstream market, with a handful of lenders reaching 80% on a rate premium. Pricing steps at 65%, 70% and 75%, with the keenest SPV mortgage rates at the lower tiers. The deposit comes in as a director’s loan, so the cash still has to be there. Our SPV mortgage calculator will size the loan against your own rent and the available rates.
Are SPV mortgage rates more expensive than a personal one? There is usually a small premium, indicatively around 0.20% to 0.40% over the equivalent personal-name product in 2026, and the gap has narrowed as the market matured. For a higher-rate landlord that premium is generally outweighed by the benefit of full mortgage interest deductibility, but that is a combined tax-and-finance calculation to work through with an accountant. Our SPV mortgage calculator shows the finance side of that comparison, putting company and personal rates side by side across the available deals.
Do I have to give a personal guarantee? Almost always, yes. Because an SPV is usually a new company with little of its own substance, lenders take a personal guarantee from the directors, commonly for the full loan, sometimes capped. Among the common requirements, some lenders also want to see a minimum level of director income. You should understand exactly what the guarantee commits you to before you sign it.
Can I move a property I already own into an SPV? You can, but it is a sale at market value from you to the company, which can trigger capital gains tax on the gain and the SDLT additional-dwelling surcharge, currently 5%, for the company buyer, plus a full refinance onto a company mortgage. Whether reliefs apply depends on your circumstances. This is tax-advice territory and must be planned with an accountant. We arrange the company mortgage leg.
Why use a broker rather than going to a lender directly? Because some of the most competitive company buy-to-let lenders, including The Mortgage Works, Leeds Building Society, Coventry Building Society, Metro Bank and Yorkshire Building Society, only accept business through intermediaries, so you cannot reach those SPV mortgages on your own. A broker also models the company-versus-personal maths, runs the ICR at the right stress, and compares rates across the whole panel before going to market.
Talk to us
If you are buying your next investment property through a company, building a portfolio across several SPVs, or weighing up whether to, the earlier we see the numbers the better we can shape the finance. It often helps to run our SPV mortgage calculator first so you arrive with a sense of the numbers. We will run the company-versus-personal maths with you at a high level, model the ICR at the right stress for your structure, compare the rates on the company mortgages across our panel, and take the case to the lenders whose appetite genuinely fits it, including the intermediary-only names you could not approach yourself. We work alongside your own accountant on the tax and structure rather than replacing them. To get started, talk to a limited company buy to let specialist.
Buy-to-let lending to a limited company is, in most cases, unregulated business lending and falls outside the FCA’s regulated mortgage perimeter. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. Where a deal involves a regulated element, for example a consumer buy to let or a director’s residential mortgage, we refer it to an appropriately regulated firm. Everything here is general information and indicative market commentary, not regulated financial advice, and nothing in it is tax advice: incorporation, transferring property into a company, the SDLT surcharge, capital gains tax and Section 24 outcomes depend on your own circumstances and change with legislation, so take professional advice from a qualified accountant or tax adviser on your own position before acting. This article was written by Matt Lenzie.