If you are self-employed and thinking about buying a property or re-mortgaging your existing property soon, it is essential to ensure you have the correct documents available for lenders to fully assess your income. Being self-employed should not impact getting a mortgage however, from experience, it is not having the correct documents available that usually cause issues/delays.
Most lenders will:
- Use the income shown on the last two years tax calculations and HMRC tax overviews, especially if you are sole trader or work under a partnership
- Require income verification documents to be dated within 18 months so most will now need the 25 self-assessment to be available
If your business in incorporated, with full company accounts produced, there are more options available with lenders. We can access lenders who allow net profits to be used, which will often be a higher figure than the level of dividends withdrawn, which may increase the amount you can borrow. Lenders may also allow costs such as pension contributions or car payments to be added back in for income. There are also lenders who can look at latest years figures and one year’s trading.
Another benefit of a business set up in this way is that lenders may use your company accounts if they are more recently dated than your self-assessments.
Key Dates
- 6th October 2025 – lenders will require 2025 tax documentation to support a mortgage application; they will no longer accept the 2024 tax returns
- 31ST January 2026 – Deadline day for the 2025 tax returns
- 5th April 2026 – the end the financial year
Although you do not need to have a tax return processed until 31st January the following year, if you want to use the income from the latest tax return for a mortgage application, for example if the figures are higher or if it is your first annual return, you can process your return earlier so we have the documents available to support the mortgage application.