Skyjob - a good plan if the SPV is set up prior to buying a property, and you complete the purchase/mortgage arrangement as the SPV, rather than as a "personal" purchase. However, as I understand the situation, once you (as an individual) own a property (with or without a mortgage), a subsequent transfer of that property to an SPV would require the sale of the property to the newly set-up SPV, thereby incurring Stamp Duty once again. This might not be too painful on a single property - £10,000 on a £500,000 property,for example, but on a buy-to-let or second and subsequent properties the Stamp Duty would be £30,000 on a £500,000 property. There would also be the additional set-up costs for any "new" mortgages required by the SPV. Total cost involved would be possibly acceptable on one property, but for more than one it could become an expensive exercise.
Once again, I'm open to correction on this, and would be interested to hear other opinions.
7B