Help: Initial advice needed please...

[j1988]

I am not sure how to start looking into this properly so looking for some initial advice please...

• Do we need to speak to an accountant, solicitor, mortgage advisor, financial advisor or a combination of them if not all of them?
• We are trying to ascertain if we can afford to own our current property as a buy-to-let and buy another home to live in? Or if there is a better way to achieve what we are trying to achieve (more monthly income)?
• If yes to the above, can the mortgage payments at the new home be the same as here (£400 ish)? What would the new home value need to be to achieve this?
• Can we use the money we would get from rent each month to pay for anything we want, including towards our new home mortgage?
• If we are able to make this work, in the long term we may want to add a 3rd property. Personal or create a company route, which is best?
• I work full time and earn £40,000 p/a. My wife works part time and earns £8,671 p/a.
• We have £15,000 in cash savings.
• My wife was gifted a £230,000 deposit, we took out a mortgage of £100,000 and purchased our house for £330,000 in December 2015. We’ve been paying mortgage payments since December 2015 and the balance of the mortgage is currently £80,367. We had a fairly recent valuation of the house done on 17/03/21 which valued the house at £385,000 - £395,000. As of 20/03/21 we believe we had approximately £302,000 of equity in the house.
• If it is possible, we would like to (at least for now anyway) leave that £230,000 'untouched' effectively as that was from her parents. Should we need to delve into that, we would speak to them first just to get their go ahead too as we believe it would be the right thing to do.
• What are the risks involved?
• Does it affect credit rating negatively? I.E. would it make it more difficult to be accepted for a loan or credit card in the future?
• How much would we be taxed? Does it affect our income taxes on our individual salaries?
• Is it more tax efficient to have it on Katie’s name only?
• Our short term aim is to have more income on a monthly basis.
• The long term aim is earning enough through rental income alone so that I can quit my job and run the portfolio of properties.
• How do people turn this into their only / main income and quit their day job?

Thank you in advance for any help whatsoever!