Mortgage for a sole trader to limited company client

We were approached by a client that had been working as a builder for a long time on a sole trader basis. Due to his success, he was recently advised to set up a limited company. Due to this change he was struggling to find a lender that would take his income into account as he didn’t have two years of company accounts since becoming a limited business.

Many banks and building societies offer great rates and affordability calculations but are very black and white when it comes to self-employed income requirements. We therefore had to find a lender that would take a ‘common sense’ approach to his income; the change in status wasn’t going to impact his earnings at all – he was long established in the trade.

We managed to find two ways of moving forward for this client. Either with lenders that could consider the single year of limited company income figures or with lenders that would take a view on previous, sole trader net profit. In this case it was more favourable for the client to go with a lender that would take a view on the sole trader income as well, so we managed to secure him a very competitive fixed product that met his needs.

Lenders usually ask for a lot of information from self-employed applicants and this can prove incredibly restrictive. The normal request is for two or three years of income figures and they will then work on an average of these figures. As everyone won’t necessarily fits this mould and we are able to find solutions for all types of self-employed client.