Protected rights in a SIPP - commercial property?

Pennywise

I have a SIPP where most of the fund (80% or so) is protected rights.

I need to buy a small commercial property (office) for my small business and wondered whether I could use the SIPP to buy it.

I've done loads of reading on the internet and can't find a definitive answer to whether I can use the protected rights funds to buy the property. I know that I can use the non-protected rights, but some sites seem to suggest restrictions on protected rights into specific types of investment (not mentioning commercial property) - it isn't clear whether they aren't mentioning commercial property because they don't deal with it or whether because it's not allowed.

The proposed property is a third party purchase, no connection with the seller, at open market value, and will be subject to professional valuation/survey etc just like any other property purchase, and it is entirely commercial - being office and back room storage space - no residential. It's not some form of fiddle, or personal buy back, or buying from a friend etc.

Anyone got any recommendations for a broker who can take over my SIPP to buy the property and then administer it (as trustees etc) - the property is relatively low value (about £75k) so I want relatively cheap fees (couple of thousand to set up and hundreds per year to administer) - some of the bigger firms are clearly set up for much bigger values and charge tens of thousands to set up and thousands per year which isn't feasible for such a small property.

vbm

It is due the administrative complexity of not being able to take higher charges out of the PR fund than the NPR fund under current rules. It is a real pain for providers to comply with this bit of legislation.

Wait until April when PR dissappears and you will have no such worries.

SippTechie

Protected Rights can be used towards a property purchase in a SIPP.

There used to be an issue with Protected Rights where they had to be held in restricted investment types, but that has now disappeared.

A few SIPP providers still don't accept Protected Rights, and a few more who do accept them impose restrictions above and beyond those imposed by legislation. This tends to be because of restrictions imposed by their scheme trust deed and rules or their admin database.

There are plenty of providers who do allow this, including the one I work for (who I won't name as don't want to advertise!).