Lenders don't always understand director's income, dividends, or two people drawing from the same business. We present your case the way lenders need to see it.
Salary, dividends, and retained profit presented in the way each lender actually wants to assess it.
Lenders who'll assess borrowing against profit left in the business, not just declared salary and dividends. This often unlocks significantly more.
When one of you draws more than the other, or your income structures are different, we find lenders who won't penalise that.
Planning income 12–24 months ahead where needed, and liaising directly with your accountant on dividends, salary and paperwork.
We're not tied to one panel, so if your bank says no, that's rarely the end of the road.
The scenario below is illustrative only. It's built to show how the numbers can work, not a real client case.
Most self-employed directors have no real idea what they earn on paper, what they can borrow, or how their income needs to be structured to get there. For clients like this, we work backwards: starting from the property they want and planning what the numbers need to look like one to two years out. We liaise directly with their accountant to agree how income should be declared, whether that's the right split of dividends between each of you, or a combination of salary plus net profit, then gather the paperwork from the accountant so the application goes in clean the first time.
Illustrative example only, based on a typical scenario. Figures are not a quote and individual circumstances vary.
Many clients come to us with a new business and only one year's accounts, or a company that's recently incorporated from what used to be a partnership, or a big jump in profit in their latest year that they want a lender to actually use. Most high-street lenders will either decline these cases outright or average the income across two or three years, which can badly understate what the business is really earning now. With the right lender, one year's accounts, a recently incorporated Ltd company, or the latest year's figures on their own can all be enough to support a mortgage.
Illustrative example only, based on a typical scenario. Figures are not a quote and individual circumstances vary.
Most husband-and-wife business owners take a combined salary and dividends of around £50,000 each to stay tax-efficient. Assessed on that declared income alone, most high-street lenders will only lend around 4.5 times it, capping borrowing at roughly £450,000 even where the business is generating far more profit. Many couples simply leave that extra profit sitting in the business, unaware it can be used. We work with lenders who will assess borrowing against retained net profit instead, without you needing to change how you draw money or pay a penny more in tax.
Illustrative example only, based on a typical scenario (net profit after tax of £200,000, salary of £10,000 each) and one lender's approach to assessing income. Lending criteria, affordability rules and individual circumstances vary, and this is not a guarantee of borrowing amount.
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