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Filing to set up a limited company to hold rental property costs £100 and the form itself takes about twenty minutes. Allow longer than that overall, because since November 2025 you have to verify your identity with Companies House first, and that is a separate step covered below. The hard part is not the setting up, it is getting three or four details right at the start so that a lender will actually lend to it later.
This article is the mechanics. Whether a company is the right structure for you in the first place is a separate question with tax at the centre of it, and I have written about that in buy to let in a company or personal. The decision belongs with your accountant. What follows assumes you have made it.
For context on how common this has become: Hamptons recorded 66,587 buy to let companies set up in 2025, a record.
An SPV is an ordinary limited company that does one thing: hold and let property.
Online incorporation costs £100. The confirmation statement is £50 a year.
Identity verification at Companies House became a legal requirement on 18 November 2025.
Get the SIC code right at the start. Lenders check it.
Keep the company to property only. Mixed trading narrows the lender list sharply.
What an SPV actually is
An SPV, or special purpose vehicle, is not a special kind of company. It is an ordinary limited company that exists to do one thing, in this case hold and let property. There is no separate registration process and no box to tick at Companies House that says SPV.
The distinction matters to lenders rather than to Companies House. Most buy to let lenders will lend to a company set up purely for property. Far fewer will lend to a company that also does something else, and those that will tend to price it higher and ask a lot more questions. Keeping the company clean is the whole point.
The SIC codes
The SIC code describes what your company does. You pick one or more at incorporation and confirm them every year.
Three matter for property. 68100, buying and selling of own real estate. 68209, other letting and operating of own or leased real estate. 68320, management of real estate on a fee or contract basis.
Most landlords holding and letting property use 68209, and many add 68100 to cover eventual sales. 68320 is for managing property on behalf of other people, which is a service business rather than a property holding one, so it usually does not belong on a straightforward SPV.
Getting this right at the start genuinely matters. Lenders check it, and a code that does not describe property, or a company carrying an unrelated code alongside the property ones, is a real cause of applications being turned away before anyone looks at the property. It is fixable afterwards, but fixing it costs you time in the middle of a purchase, which is exactly when you do not have any.
One thing to ignore: some sites are selling guidance on a SIC 2026 framework. Companies House said in May 2026 that a future SIC framework is under discussion with the ONS but that no final framework has been agreed or implemented, and that any change would need legislation. You still file the existing codes.
The Companies House step almost every guide misses
Identity verification became a legal requirement on 18 November 2025. Directors and people with significant control have to verify their identity with Companies House. It had been available voluntarily since April 2025; it is not voluntary any more.
For anyone setting up a new company, this is now the first step rather than an afterthought. You cannot register a new company or be appointed as a director without verifying first, and you need a personal code from Companies House before you can file. Acting as a director while unverified can be an offence.
If you are already a director of an existing company, you are in a transition period rather than in breach. Existing directors verify at their next confirmation statement, with the transition running to around mid November 2026.
Almost every SPV guide online was written before this and does not mention it. If you are working from an article dated 2023, this is the step that will stop you.
What it costs
Online incorporation is £100. On paper it is £124. There is a same day service at £156, but it is only available through filing software rather than the standard online route, so in practice it means going through an agent or formation company.
The annual confirmation statement is £50 online. That is the filing that confirms your company details, including the SIC code, are still correct.
Those are the Companies House fees only. Your real ongoing cost is accountancy, and company accounts cost meaningfully more than putting rental income on a self assessment return. That figure is one to get from an accountant before you incorporate rather than after, because for some landlords it is large enough to change the answer entirely.
Speak to an expert
If you are setting a company up, it is worth having the mortgage side sense checked before you file anything rather than after. I am a whole of market broker and I handle limited company buy to let cases.
Getting it right for the mortgage
Four things make the difference between a company a lender is comfortable with and one it is not.
The SIC code describes property and nothing else. The company does property and nothing else, so no consultancy work run through the same entity, no unrelated trading, nothing that turns it into a mixed business.
The directors and shareholders are the people who will be giving personal guarantees. Nearly every lender in this space wants personal guarantees from the directors, so adding a family member as a director because it seemed tidy at the time creates a problem later. Most lenders also cap how many directors or shareholders they will accept, and some will not lend where a shareholder is another company.
And the company is registered in the UK as an ordinary UK company. Overseas structures narrow the lender list sharply.
A newly formed company with no trading history is fine. Lenders assess the directors behind it, not the company accounts, so you do not need to wait a year before applying.
The order to do things in
Speak to an accountant before you incorporate. Once property is inside a company, taking it out again is a disposal with tax consequences, so this is a decision that is expensive to reverse.
Incorporate before you apply for the mortgage, not after you have had an offer accepted. Lenders lend to the company, so the company has to exist and be correct before the application goes in. It does not take long, but it is one more thing to do in a week when you already have plenty.
Then get the mortgage side checked before you commit to a purchase. Company lending is a different product set with different pricing and different criteria, and the limited company buy to let page covers how that works. If you want to sanity check what a property might support, there is a maximum mortgage calculator too.
If you are setting a company up and want the mortgage side checked before you file anything, that is worth doing in that order rather than the other way round. I am a mortgage broker in Winchester and I handle limited company buy to let cases across the whole market. More on the buy to let mortgage hub.
Sources: GOV.UK, verifying your identity for Companies House; GOV.UK, Companies House fees; Companies House, keeping your SIC code accurate, 28 May 2026; Hamptons.
Starting in a company rather than restructuring into one later is one of the quiet advantages of coming into buy to let now rather than a decade ago.
Once the company is set up, the lending side is covered in my SPV mortgages guide, including the personal guarantee most lenders expect.
Need Personal Mortgage Advice?
Nothing here is tax or legal advice. Whether a company is the right structure, and what it costs you in tax and accountancy, is a conversation for a qualified accountant before you incorporate. The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate most buy to let mortgages.
