Owning entities

The person you speak to is not always the party that owns the property. A unit may be held by a family trust, a close corporation or a company, while one individual deals with you about it.

An owning entity records that legal owner.

Why it is separate from the owner

Because the documents have to be right. A statement or an invoice must be addressed to the party that actually holds the title — the trust, not the trustee.

Recording the entity separately also handles the ordinary case where one person holds property through several vehicles: two flats in a family trust, one house in their own name, another in a company. Those are different legal owners with different books, and they may well need separate statements for tax.

Keep them apart and each entity’s books stand on their own. Merge them and you get one number that belongs to nobody in particular — which is precisely the number an accountant will send back.

What it changes in practice

Addressing. Statements and invoices carry the entity’s registered name.

Separate books. Each entity’s units roll up to that entity, not into one pooled owner total.

The portal. An owner who holds property through more than one entity can switch between them in their portal, and sees one set of books at a time.

What it does not change

The unit is still the economic anchor (units), and the owner is still the person you deal with (owners). An owning entity sits between them: it is who the money legally belongs to, not a replacement for either.

A unit names at most one owning entity. Where none is recorded, the owner holds it personally, which is the common case for a single private landlord.

VAT is not handled per entity yet. An entity may be VAT-registered while its owner is not; Domi Vera records the entity but does not currently render VAT differently because of it. If this affects you, raise it before relying on a statement for a VAT return.