Portfolio Succession Plan

This plan is built specifically for property investors with £2m or more in property who want to keep their income and control, and still pass the portfolio to their family.

You’ve spent decades building a portfolio. What happens to it next?

Most landlords find themselves with the same three bad choices when it comes to estate planning:

• Keep everything and leave your family a large inheritance tax bill, often paid by selling properties on HMRC’s timetable.
• Give properties away and pay capital gains tax now, as if you had sold them, with no proceeds of sale to fund the tax.
• Sell the properties you don’t want to sell, and lose the income you rely on.

To make matters worse, the rules are only tightening; the inheritance tax allowances are frozen until 2031, unused pensions count towards your estate from April 2027, and rental profits are taxed at new, higher property rates from the same date. There is rarely one tax trick that solves this. The answer is usually a custom plan, chosen around your figures and your family.

An illustrative example

David and Susan are in their early 60s with three adult children. They own 20 residential buy-to-let properties worth £3.7m, bought over 25 years, plus their home and pensions.

Their Portfolio Succession Plan combines new wills and a family trust now, a properly run family partnership, and a decision on a family company in two years’ time, once their accountant has confirmed the conditions are met.

What your Succession Plan covers

• Your starting position: every property’s value, debt, ownership and untaxed gain, your income and your whole estate.
• The cost of doing nothing: your family’s inheritance tax bill now and at certain points in the future, and how it would be paid.
• Every realistic planning option available to you, tested against your figures: lifetime gifts, discretionary trusts, family partnerships, family investment companies, freezer and growth shares, new wills.
• Capital gains tax and stamp duty checked on every step, because this is where proposals for landlords often fail.
• Your income and control: how much you keep, who decides, and what happens on divorce or death in the next generation.
• A 10-year roadmap, setting out what to do now, what to do later, and the decisions along the way.

How it works

1. A free 30-minute call. We talk about your portfolio and your family, and I tell you honestly whether a Succession Plan is worth doing for you.
2. Your information. You complete a fact-find, or in some cases (with your permission) I collect the figures your accountant already holds.
3. The analysis. I model your portfolio and test each option.
4. Your strategy meeting. About 30 days after you instruct me, we spend about two hours going through your plan and agreeing next steps.
5. Putting it in place. I carry out the legal work at fixed fees to implement your plan and work with your accountant to ensure everyone is aligned.

The fee

£4,500 + VAT, fixed, invoiced only after your strategy meeting.

• If you go ahead with any of the recommended planning within 60 days of the strategy meeting, up to £1,500 of this fee is credited against future work.
• If anything in your plan is unclear afterwards, a follow-up meeting is included at no additional cost.
• The work to put your plan in place is quoted at fixed fees at your strategy meeting so there are no hidden costs or unknown ‘time spent’ charges.

I analyse every portfolio myself, so I take on a limited number of new Succession Plans each month.

Is it right for you?

A Succession Plan is usually worthwhile if you:

• have an estate of around £2m or more, including your home and pensions
• own rental properties personally or in a partnership, with large gains on your older purchases
• want to keep the portfolio rather than sell it
• want your children to inherit it, without losing your income or control in the meantime

If your estate is smaller, new wills and Lasting Powers of Attorney may be all you need, and I’ll tell you so on our call.

Why work with me

I’m Steven J. Smith, a solicitor with over 20 years’ experience specialising in trusts, SDLT, CGT, IHT and estate planning. During that time I have advised many landlords and have set up everything from simple bare trusts for grandchildren to more complex Family Investment Companies and everything in between. That combination matters, because the best answer for a landlord sits where trusts, property, stamp duty and capital gains tax meet.

Your plan is never handed to anyone else. All of the work I do is done by me personally which is why I work with only a handful of new clients each month. I am also able to work with your accountant rather than around them: they keep your compliance work, and I add the legal and structural side.

Questions landlords ask