Real estate structuring

Real estate structuring is the work of deciding how to own property, rather than simply buying it. For a single home in one's own country the answer is usually obvious. For prime, high-value or cross-border real estate, the ownership wrapper around the asset can matter as much as the asset itself, affecting tax on acquisition, income and sale, exposure to inheritance and wealth taxes, privacy, liability, and how easily the property can one day be sold or passed on.

The clients who need this are buying trophy residential property abroad, building portfolios across countries, holding commercial or development assets, or placing real estate inside a wider family or trust structure. A founder buying a London flat, a family acquiring a villa on the Riviera, an investor assembling a portfolio across several markets: each faces a different tax and legal regime layered on top of their own home-country rules.

As at 2026 the case for getting this right has strengthened. Many countries have introduced or raised taxes aimed squarely at corporate-owned and foreign-owned property, beneficial-ownership registers now reach into real estate, and lenders scrutinise ownership structures closely. The naive offshore-company-owns-the-house structure that was once standard is now, in several markets, the single most expensive mistake a buyer can make.

Choosing the right approach by jurisdiction

There is no universal real-estate structure. The right wrapper is dictated above all by the country where the property sits, because that country taxes the land regardless of where the owner or the holding entity lives. Below is how we typically frame the major markets.

United Kingdom. Once the classic case for offshore-company ownership, now often the opposite. Annual charges on company-held residential property, punitive rates on enveloped dwellings, and inheritance-tax exposure that reaches through structures mean direct or carefully advised ownership is frequently better for homes. Commercial property follows different and sometimes more favourable rules. This is a market where the wrong structure is actively penalised.

France and much of the EU. Civil-law forced heirship and wealth taxes on real estate drive structuring. A French SCI (a property-holding company) is a common and accepted tool for managing succession and co-ownership, but it interacts heavily with home-country tax and must be set up with French advice. Generic offshore wrappers tend to backfire here.

United Arab Emirates. A property market with no personal income or capital-gains tax on real estate as at 2026, and structures that can be held through free-zone or local companies. Attractive for both use and yield, provided ownership rules for the specific emirate and development are respected.

United States. A market that punishes the unstructured foreign buyer through estate-tax exposure and withholding on sale. Foreign nationals holding US real estate directly can face significant US estate tax; a considered structure, often involving a corporation or a layered arrangement, is usually essential. This is specialist territory and demands US tax counsel.

Offshore holding companies (BVI, Jersey and similar). Still useful, but for the right reasons: ease of transferring ownership by selling shares rather than the property, and consolidating a multi-country portfolio. They are not a tax shield against the country where the land sits, and selling them as such is how clients end up with surprise tax bills.

The recurring lesson across all of these is that the property's location, not the owner's preference, sets the rules.

How it works

• Start with the property's country. We establish the local tax, succession and ownership rules first, because they are the constraints everything else must fit around.
• Layer in the owner's home country. A structure that is efficient where the property sits can be disastrous where the owner is taxed. Both regimes are mapped together.
• Define the goal. Personal use, rental yield, capital growth, succession or portfolio consolidation. Each points to a different wrapper.
• Select the vehicle. Direct ownership, a local company, an SCI-style vehicle, an offshore holding company, or a trust holding a company, with the choice justified against tax, liability, disclosure obligations and exit.
• Arrange financing. Lenders have firm views on acceptable structures; the wrapper must be one a mortgage provider will lend against, decided before purchase.
• Implement and maintain. Incorporation, conveyancing coordination, beneficial-ownership filings and the annual compliance the structure carries for as long as the property is held.

What goes wrong

• The offshore-envelope tax trap. Buying residential property through an offshore company in a market that penalises exactly that, the UK being the textbook case, and incurring annual charges that dwarf any benefit.
• Ignoring estate tax. Foreign buyers holding US or other property directly, unaware that death triggers a large local estate-tax bill the family then scrambles to fund.
• Financing killed by structure. Choosing a wrapper the bank will not lend against, and discovering it only after committing to the purchase.
• Home-country anti-avoidance. A structure that looks clever locally but triggers reporting or anti-avoidance rules where the owner lives, turning a tax saving into a penalty.
• Privacy that becomes a liability. Opaque structures now sit awkwardly against real-estate beneficial-ownership registers and can complicate sale and lending.
• No exit plan. Building a structure that is efficient to hold but expensive or messy to unwind, so that selling the property triggers tax or transfer problems that were never modelled.

How HPT helps

A senior adviser leads each real-estate engagement, because the interaction of two or more tax systems around a single illiquid asset leaves little room for a templated answer. We coordinate, but we work alongside local tax and legal counsel in the property's country rather than pretending one structure fits every flag.

We deliver a written structuring memo for each acquisition: the recommended ownership vehicle, the tax position on purchase, holding and sale, the inheritance and wealth-tax exposure, the financing implications, and the cost of running the structure. We set out the alternatives we rejected and why, so the decision is documented and defensible.

We then implement, coordinating incorporation of any holding entity, beneficial-ownership filings, the banking and financing introductions, and the conveyancing interface, so the structure is in place before completion rather than retrofitted afterwards.

And we are honest about fit. For many buyers, especially of a single home, direct ownership with good advice is the right and cheapest answer, and we will say so. Structuring earns its keep on prime, cross-border and portfolio assets; where it does not, we will not manufacture complexity for its own sake.