Right. From the off. I always use a mortgage broker. Every single time I do anything with mortgages. Why? They know mortgages. The time and energy I save by using a broker more than compensates for any fee that I have ever paid.
I genuinely love brokers. They are great. They are not however tax advisors. Neither are solicitors. Estate agents aren’t either.
This might seem like it doesn’t need to be said but it really does. I see people all of the time that have portfolios underway but have not had any tax advice. When I ask them how they made some of the key decisions that go along with buying a property they tell me it’s ok, they used a broker. Or the solicitor kept them right.
I shudder when I hear this. I do a lot of talks to rooms full of property professionals and one recent talk was to a room full or mortgage brokers. I do a fairly snazzy interactive quiz where the audience have to choose from multiple choice answers.
This is the results slide for one of the most important topics facing landlords at the moment.
Now, to repeat, I love brokers. These results are quite scary however. When I was talking to the brokers afterwards they stressed that they don’t give tax advice. I’m sure they don’t. I do wonder though what happened during the conversation about whether to buy as an individual or a company. If company was suggested because of a false presumption that there is no tax relief on interest that would be quite some “not” tax advice.
Equally if someone thought they’d be getting 40% tax relief but won’t that will cause quite a shock when they do their first tax return!
So get your tax advice from a tax advisor. Just like you get the gas engineer in to fit your boilers instead of your builder (you do though don’t you!?).
PS Accountants and tax advisors are not the same either but that’s for another day 😁