The client questions letting agents hear most — and where to send each one

Should I put the portfolio in a limited company? What will I pay in capital gains if I sell number 42? Can I just leave the houses to the kids? Is it even worth being a landlord any more? You manage the property, so you get the questions — usually in the same phone call as a query about a boiler. Some of this is venting. Much of it is real, because the tax treatment of landlords has changed sharply since 2017, when mortgage interest relief began tapering to a basic-rate credit, and plenty of portfolio owners have never had proper advice on any of it. Your instinct to help is right. Your instinct to answer is the part that needs discipline, because tax and investment advice sit outside a letting agent's lane, however obvious the answer feels.

You are allowed to know things. You can tell a landlord that a sale of UK residential property with a taxable gain must be reported and the capital gains tax paid within 60 days of completion — a deadline that still ambushes people. You can explain that individual landlords now get a 20% tax credit on mortgage interest rather than full deduction, which is why higher-rate taxpayers keep muttering about incorporation. You can note that moving properties into a company is itself a disposal, potentially triggering capital gains tax and stamp duty on the way in. What you cannot do is conclude. Therefore you should incorporate is advice. Therefore this is exactly the question an accountant answers is a referral. Same conversation, entirely different liability.

Keep the map simple and use it every week.

• Incorporation, CGT, allowable expenses — an accountant with genuine property-tax experience, not a generalist doing landlords as a sideline.
• Leaving property to the kids, trusts, inheritance tax — a will specialist or estate planner; property-heavy estates are where intestacy and old wills do the most damage.
• Remortgaging, releasing equity, pension versus property questions — a regulated financial adviser or mortgage broker on the FCA Register.
• Free guidance first — MoneyHelper.

Agents who route well keep landlords for decades, because the landlord's whole ecosystem runs through them. Platforms like SmartPeer make the referral trackable, with a generated disclosure letter that keeps signposting and advising visibly separate. That is the entire trick. Send them somewhere good, and be the person who did.