UK property assets held by offshore companies are increasingly at risk of becoming ‘ownerless’, legal experts have told Spear’s.
Cases of offshore companies holding UK property assets dissolving as a result of having nobody managing them have risen in the past few years, said property lawyer Jonathan Hewitt. As a result of this, the property owed by the once-owned company would be deemed ‘ownerless’.
‘Agents can decide they don’t want to act anymore for risk and compliance reasons,’ said Hewitt.
Checks on whether these agents can confidently identify their property-owning clients, known as KYC (Know Your Customer), are one reason why they might choose to stop managing one of these companies.
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Tax changes in the UK aimed at eliminating the benefits of of holding property via offshore companies have caused an increasing number of individuals to transfer their property from corporate to personal ownership, said Hewitt.
‘Sometimes people in civil law jurisdictions don’t realise that if you dissolve a company, its assets don’t automatically pass to shareholders as may be the case in their jurisdictions,’ he said.
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Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings is an example of this – it tax is applied to property owned via offshore companies worth over £500,000, with owners of real estate worth over £20 million being charged £303,450 annually.
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According to research from Tax Policy Associates, around 100,000 properties in England and Wales are owned by offshore companies; tax benefits, privacy and the protection offered by offshore structures have often-cited reasons for the decision.
However, these property owners are at risk of losing the freehold of their real estate assets if the holding company is struck off the corporate register in its jurisdiction. In this case, the property is transferred to the ownership of the Crown in a legal process called ‘escheat’, which has roots in medieval English law.
Retrieving escheated property can be costly and arduous, private client lawyer Chris Moorcroft, a partner at Harbottle & Lewis, told Spear’s: ‘It is a torturous and expensive legal process to rectify one’s asset-owning position and get them back.’
Retrieving the freehold of a property lost as a result of escheat can cost over £10,000, with this figure likely to rise in complex cases, Moorcroft added. The bulk of this amount is due to legal fees, which can build up especially when there is a multi-jurisdictional element.
As the beneficial owners of the property often live outside of the jurisdiction where their holding company is based, specialised corporate service providers or trust firms often manage the holding company on their behalf. While these arrangements rarely cause major issues, providers do occasionally withdraw their services or face other challenges. This could be because the beneficial owner has failed to pay the service provider, or because one of the parties involved fails to respond adequately to a KYC (Know Your Customer) check, a mandatory, multi-step verification process used by financial institutions and businesses to confirm the identity of their clients.
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In these cases, UK property assets that have been held by offshore holding companies can become legally ownerless.
‘It is surprisingly common to find companies owning UK real estate, often worth millions of pounds, getting struck off the corporate register where they are based – this can create all sorts of legal difficulties,’ said Moorcroft.
An example is Lizzium Ltd v The Crown Estate, where the administrator of a family trust transferred the ownership of a portfolio of properties to a Gibraltan company called Clairvale Ltd in 1997.
Lizzium, based in Jersey, was a shareholder in Clairvale, which held the freehold for a property in Suffolk. Clairvale was later dissolved, and it transpired 18 years later that one of the properties had not been transferred to Lizzium, resulting in the escheated land falling under the ownership of the Crown. In 2021, the court ruled that as there was only an alleged intention to transfer the property, rather than a legal one, the land remained escheated to the Crown.
Similar issues can occur for UK-based property-owning companies. In 2024 Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour discovered that he did not technically own the £9 million Hove property in which he lived. Ownership of the six-bedroom house was not transferred from his company Hoveco Ltd after it was dissolved in 2014, and therefore passed to the Crown as bona vacantia, a legal term meaning ‘ownerless goods’, referring to property once owned by a UK-based entity which has no legal owner.
This administrative error means – which was only discovered when Gilmour sought to sell the home – means it is still the property of the Crown. The house was previously up for sale, most recently being listed for £9 million. It was since taken off property websites, such as Zoopla, in late February 2026.
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Handling such a situation with an offshore company can be difficult to rectify, said property lawyer Jonathan Hewitt of Harbottle & Lewis.
‘If you put the company back on the register in an offshore jurisdiction, nothing happens to the land in English legal terms at all. If you go to the Land Registry and write a transfer of the deed to try and reclaim that land, they’ll look up the company and say, “No, that company was dissolved,”’ Hewitt said.
In order to challenge the ‘ownerless’ status of land that has gone to the Crown, lawyers can apply for a vesting order – which aims to prove that someone is entitled to own an asset. To be successful, comprehensive supporting evidence is needed, such as Land Registry documents. The cost of a vesting order can exceed £10,000, especially in more complex scenarios, noted Hewitt.
The situation is slightly different for a UK company that holds British property. If a company is put back on the register within six years of its dissolution, the law says that the company and assets go back to the business as if they had never left. After this period, a vesting order can also be made to attempt to retrieve lost property.
The UK government has made efforts towards increased transparency regarding property ownership. A list showing the beneficial owner of all UK companies, called the People with Significant Control (PSC) register, was introduced in 2016.
‘For English companies there is now the possibility of a company being struck off for failing to disclose beneficial ownership in accordance with regulations,’ said corporate lawyer Jeremy Whiteson of Fladgate.
For those who wish to avoid these time-consuming and often-expensive legal processes, the solution is to pay close attention to the dealings surrounding one’s assets, says Moorcroft.
‘An obvious, but important, piece of advice is to put in place processes, whether that is for underlying beneficial owners or family offices, to make sure this does not happen in the first place,’ he said. ‘You need to be vigilant about making sure that fees get paid, you’re dealing with high-quality service providers in relevant jurisdictions, and you are responding to requests for KYC, so that you don’t find yourself in a position where the agent doesn’t have the requisite KYC and resigns.’
