I agree - there doesn't seem to be anyone out there to answer the questions! Here is an article we scanned in from a Sundy paper a couple of years ago. It is about commercial property, but presumably similar rules will apply. I did call the number at the end, but I think it was just a list of FAs in my area, rather than SIPPS experts.
"FOR landlord Arthur John, the Cresselly Arms pub is more than just his living, its his pension, too.
Arthur, 54, worked for 29 years for Royal London Assurance, latterly as an area manager, and had long wanted to leave insurance to become a self-employed publican.
He chose the start of the new millennium as the perfect time for the move.
The pub he wanted to buy was this picturesque 16th Century inn at Pontargothi, Dyfed, where he often helped out behind the bar. Its owners were ready to sell, but Arthur did not know how he was going to raise the money.
Then he heard about a rarely used type of pension plan called a Sipp a Self Invested Personal Pension. Sipps allow braver investors to run their own pension funds and to hold a surprisingly wide range of assets within them. The assets may include commercial property, such as the pub Arthur wanted to buy.
The owners of the Cresselly Arms were asking more than £300,000 for the business.
Arthur says: I certainly did not have that sort of money to spend. But I realised I had a lot of ldoney in my pension fund about £325,000, built up over nearly 30 years.
ARTHUR checked further into his pension fund and found that it had about £250,000 of assets that could be turned into cash, with a further £75,000 tied up in Serps, the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme, which he could not draw on until he reached 60.
I heard that a Sipp would allow me to use assets in my fund to buy the pub, he says. It seemed an ideal solution to my problem. But when Arthur looked for expert advice, the first people he turned to could not help. The
High Street banks he approached admitted they knew little about Sipps.
Finally he found a specialist pensions adviser that did know about them, Francis Walls & Richards, based in Port Talbot, West Glamorgan. The adviser put him in touch with James Hay, a firm of pension trustees in Salisbury, Wiltshire, which set up a Sipp and transferred his fund.
JUST over £200,000 from the Sipp was used to buy the bricks and mortar of the pub. Pension rules prohibited Sipp funds from being used for other parts of the business, so Arthur paid for the rest with other savings and a loan from Royal Bank of Scotland.
Because the pension fund now owns the building, Arthur pays a commercial rent to the fund, which the trustees administer.
Pensions adviser David Roderick, who guided Arthur through the purchase, says: The Sipp has not just helped Arthur buy a business he might otherwise not have been able to afford, it has given him strong tax advantages as well. The value of the property can grow tax-free within the pension fund, and if it is eventually sold, it will not be liable to capital gains tax.
A property held in a Sipp is normally sold when the holder decides to retire and draw a pension. The proceeds of the sale are used to buy a pension annuity, producing income for life.
But if the pension holder cannot or does not want to sell the property on retirement, the rules allow it to be let to someone else. The rent is used by the administrator to provide the pension holder with an income. Sipp rules say that the trustee or Sipp manager must oversee everything, and the pension holder must pay fees for the running of the Sipp, which can vary widely between providers.
Sipps are not designed only for business people who want to hold commercial property in them, they are also aimed at keen investors who want to run their own pension portfolios rather than have them managed by pension companies.
For details of independent financial advisers who specialise in Sipps, call IFA Promotion on 0800 085 3250."
ES