Self Employed Mortgages Support Guide

Whether you’re a sole trader or limited company, a builder, plumber, contractor, techie or gardener, when you work for yourself our mortgages can work for you.

• We offer you the same competitive mortgage products we offer employed customers.
• We can consider your retained profits from the latest financial accounts in your business when accessing your income. 
• You can speak to your dedicated mortgage adviser at any time during the process and at any time in the future
• Our team of underwriters will access your application on its individual merits
• We’ll offer you a competitive product replacement when your original one comes to an end

Our mortgages can work for you

We offer the same mortgage products to those who work for themselves as we do to employed borrowers.

Our underwriters assess each individual mortgage application on its own merits.  We don’t use an automated system to make our decisions, our decisions are based on you as an individual.

The following information will help you understand what we need from you in order to give you an individual decision.

We’ll need to assess and verify your income

One of the challenges you may face is proving your income is sufficient to pay your monthly mortgage payments.

• Self-employed income can vary, so if you have one bad year it could affect your ability to borrow the amount you need.
• If your business is still growing your income averaged over three years may not be representative of what you can achieve going forward.
• Your accountant may advise you to reduce your income for tax reasons. Whilst this is entirely legal it does mean on paper your income is far less than you actually earn.
• If you’re a Director of a Limited Company, we look at different ways of assessing your income – such as your net profit, or Director’s remuneration and dividends both of which could significantly affect how much you can borrow.
• Limited Liability Partnerships share the business’s profits between the partners, and each pays tax on their share.  Each year, the partnership must send a Partnership Tax Return to the Inland Revenue. Additionally, each partner must also send an annual Personal Tax return, pay income tax on their share of the partnership’s profits and pay National Insurance. As partners’ income can be made up of unpredictable drawings rather than an income that is guaranteed, it can be difficult for some lenders to assess what a partner can borrow. Our mortgage advisers are very familiar with lending to partners and will be able to help you understand the options available to you.

The information we’ll need you to provide

Accounts

• You’ll need to provide two or three years of audited accounts.
• If you’re a Limited Company, we’ll consider your net profits and take into account Director’s remuneration plus dividends. If you’re in a Partnership we’ll look at your share of income.

Tax

• SA302/Tax Calculation and Tax Year Overview forms are acceptable these can be obtained from HMRC.
• We’ll need to see Tax Calculation (SA302) and Tax Year Overview documents covering the last three tax years.
• An assessment of retained profits can’t be made from an SA302 so would require either the full accounts or an accountant’s certificate.