Buying a property from a corporate seller

Not every seller is a person moving on with their life. Ex-buy-to-let portfolios being sold off by landlord companies, properties held inside a single-asset company (often called a "corporate wrapper," sometimes set up years earlier for tax or estate-planning reasons), and properties sold by liquidators or administrators after a business becomes insolvent are all genuinely common in the UK market — just not something most first-time buyers have thought about until it's the property in front of them.

None of this makes a purchase a bad idea. It does mean a few things work differently, and it's worth knowing what to check before you offer, not after.

Two different ways the sale can be structured

This is the first thing to establish, since it changes almost everything else about the transaction.

• Asset sale — you buy the property itself, exactly like buying from an individual. Standard conveyancing process, standard Land Registry transfer. This is the far more common structure for a typical residential purchase, and the one most buyers will encounter.
• Share sale — you buy the shares of the company that owns the property, and the property itself never technically changes hands — the company that owns it does. This is unusual for a straightforward home purchase, but does happen with certain corporate-wrapper properties. It brings tax and legal complexity most residential conveyancers don't handle routinely, since you inherit the company's full history, not just the property's.

What to actually check before you offer

• Companies House status — confirm the company is active, not dissolved or in the process of being struck off. A search is free and takes minutes. A dissolved company technically can't sell anything, and a property left behind by a dissolved company can revert to the Crown (known as bona vacantia) — a genuinely messy situation to inherit.
• Who has authority to sign — your solicitor should confirm the person signing on the company's behalf is a genuine director (or has been properly authorised), not just someone who says they're handling it.
• Charges registered against the company or property — both Companies House and HM Land Registry can show outstanding charges (effectively, debts secured against the company or the property itself) that need resolving before or at completion.
• ATED history, for higher-value properties — the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings applies to residential properties over £500,000 held inside a company. If relevant, worth confirming there's no unpaid liability that could attach to the property.

Expect less disclosure, not more caution from the seller

A company that's never lived in the property — or a liquidator selling on behalf of a business that's wound down — genuinely doesn't know things a resident owner would. Expect far more "not known" answers on the standard property information form than you'd see from an individual seller. That's not evasiveness; they usually can't answer accurately even if they wanted to.

This shifts more of the burden onto your own inspection. A full survey is worth the money here more than almost anywhere else — sewer and drainage checks in particular, since these are exactly the kind of thing an absent corporate owner is least likely to know about.

"Full" vs "limited" title guarantee

Most residential sales come with full title guarantee — the seller promises they have the right to sell and the property is free of undisclosed problems. Corporate sellers, and liquidators or administrators especially, often only offer limited title guarantee instead — a weaker promise that only covers problems the seller caused themselves, not problems that existed before their involvement. It's a standard, legitimate part of insolvency-related sales, but it does mean less legal protection sits behind the purchase than you'd have buying from an individual — worth knowing you're accepting, not something to discover after completion.

Timelines tend to be firmer

Corporate and institutional sellers are often working to their own internal deadlines — a portfolio disposal target, an insolvency process with its own legal timetable — and have less flexibility to extend than an individual seller would. Have your Mortgage in Principle and solicitor lined up before you offer, not after, since there's often less room to catch up if you fall behind.