Buy to let pension investors 'need Lasting Power of Attorney'

A property solicitors’ practice says buy to let investors who intend using their property to fund some, or all, of their retirement should have a property Lasting Power of Attorney created before they reach retirement age. 

Moore Blatch says that regardless of whether a landlord uses an agent to manage their portfolio, they will nonetheless need to deal with financial aspects from time to time. 

It claims a “significant percentage” of landlords will become unable to manage some, or all, of their financial affairs at some point during their retirement due to physical ill-health or a lack of mental capacity.  

LPAs allow a person to appoint a third party - the ‘attorney’ - to make decisions about their property matters, if they no longer have the capacity to do so themselves.

Current take up of LPAs is modest. Around one million LPAs have been taken out in England and Wales since 2012 - out of five million aged over 75.

“Without an LPA a third party would not legally be allowed to instruct an adviser on any changes to a property portfolio no matter how closely related. We would usually recommend that the LPA is drafted by a solicitor as there can be very serious consequences should an LPA be completed erroneously and the forms can appear to be deceptively simple. In most cases errors are not discovered until it is too late” says a spokeswoman for the firm.