“If I could give accidental landlords one piece of mortgage advice, it would be not to leave this until the last minute.”
– Billy McCluskey – Commercial Trust
You didn’t buy a buy-to-let; you bought your home, and then life changed. Perhaps you’ve moved in with a partner, relocated for work, inherited another property or simply decided that selling your old home isn’t the right move. Instead, you’ve found a tenant and become what the mortgage industry calls an ‘accidental landlord’.
It’s more common than you might think. The government’s latest English Private Landlord Survey found that while 52% of individual landlords bought their first rental property intending to let it, 37% originally bought it to live in themselves. A further 6% acquired their first rental through inheritance.
But there’s a mortgage problem hiding in that transition, as the one you took out to live in your home was agreed on that basis. Deciding to rent the property out doesn’t automatically turn it into a buy-to-let mortgage.
So, what should you do?
Don’t simply start renting out your home
The first call I’d make wouldn’t be to an estate agent. It would be to your mortgage lender or broker. If you have a residential mortgage, you need your lender’s permission before letting the property.
Depending on your lender and circumstances, one option may be consent to let, which allows you to rent the property while retaining your residential mortgage for an agreed period. For someone whose change may be temporary, that can be useful, but consent to let isn’t a permanent mortgage strategy.
Your next mortgage may not be a standard buy-to-let
We recently helped a client who found himself in exactly this position. He had moved out of his home to live with family and let out the property with consent from his residential mortgage lender. As the residential mortgage deal period came towards its end, he wanted the tenant to remain and needed to remortgage.
On the face of it, that sounds like a straightforward switch to buy-to-let, but it wasn’t, because the property had originally been purchased as his home rather than as an investment. The appropriate route was a consumer buy-to-let mortgage.
Consumer buy-to-let exists specifically for circumstances like these, where someone has become a landlord because their personal situation changed, rather than because they originally set out to run a property investment business.
And that’s an important distinction, because not every lender operates in this market and the criteria can be different.
Your equity can make a huge difference
The next thing I’d look at is how much of the property you actually own. In our client’s case, he needed to borrow at 83% loan-to-value (LTV). In simple terms, the mortgage needed to represent 83% of the property’s value.
Many high street buy-to-let lenders cap their lending at 80% LTV, so at 83% LTV, the number of lenders willing to consider the application shrinks considerably.
That’s why accidental landlords shouldn’t assume that because they’ve successfully paid a residential mortgage for years, securing the next mortgage will be straightforward.
Before doing anything, find out your property’s realistic current value, your outstanding mortgage balance and therefore your LTV. A few percentage points can materially change the products available to you.
Strangely, having experience can sometimes work against you
As our client had already been renting the property under consent to let, some lenders regarded him as an experienced landlord, rather than a first-time landlord. You might assume that’s helpful, and sometimes it is, but lender criteria aren’t universal.
Some products are specifically designed to help first-time landlords enter the market, while other lenders want evidence of previous letting experience. Falling somewhere between the two can actually narrow your choices.
For this client, the combination of consumer buy-to-let, an 83% LTV requirement and his landlord classification meant most mainstream lenders weren’t suitable.
Our advisers therefore identified the small number of lenders on our panel operating in the consumer buy-to-let market above 80% LTV and discussed the case with underwriting teams before submitting an application. The case moved smoothly through to completion, allowing him to retain the property and his tenant.
That’s the part accidental landlords need to understand: your mortgage options are determined by the rent a property can/is achieving and your circumstances, not simply by the fact that you have a property you’d like to rent out.
Don’t compare your mortgage with someone else’s
The wider buy-to-let market remains active. UK Finance recorded 58,272 new buy-to-let loans worth £10.8 billion in Q1 2026, up 3.3% by number and 7% by value year-on-year, while average gross rental yields rose from 6.93% to 7.21%.
Our latest Buy-to-Let Mortgage Index also shows landlords remain active but are becoming more selective about the opportunities they pursue.
That doesn’t mean every borrower has access to the same deals. Accidental landlords can sit outside standard lending criteria, with lenders considering factors such as LTV, rental income, personal income, landlord experience, property type and how you became a landlord.
So the lowest advertised rate shouldn’t be your starting point. A better question to ask your mortgage advisor is which lenders will consider my circumstances?
Buy-to-let mortgage payments can be significantly lower
Residential mortgages are typically taken on a repayment basis, where you pay down the interest for borrowing and also the initial lump sum used to buy the property. The end goal is often to own the house outright eventually.
If you decide to let the property out because you intend to live elsewhere, you may not need to even own the property outright and instead choose to take an interest-only mortgage. On a like-for-like basis, this usually significantly reduces the monthly mortgage cost, which can have a dramatic and positive impact on the income you receive from the rent after paying the mortgage and associated costs.
Start looking before your consent to let expires
If I could give accidental landlords one piece of mortgage advice, it would be not to leave this until the last minute. If you’re currently renting under consent to let, check when your initial rate period expires. Find your latest mortgage statement and work out your approximate LTV. Be clear on whether you intend to keep the property temporarily, or for the long term.
Then review your options.
You may find a straightforward buy-to-let solution. Your circumstances may instead point towards consumer buy-to-let. You may need a higher-LTV specialist lender. Or, once you’ve looked properly at the mortgage costs and likely rental return, you may decide keeping the property no longer makes financial sense.
The important thing is knowing that while becoming a landlord may have been accidental, your mortgage strategy shouldn’t be.
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