Please be advised, we’re making some important changes to our Buy to Let (BTL) lending policy that are applicable to any application created within our systems from today, Tuesday 29th June.

As a reminder, we consider your client’s individual circumstances in our affordability assessment. The benefit of this is that clients can use their personal disposable income (including surplus rent from other properties) in addition to the rental income from the subject property to pass affordability.

Our overall affordability assessment will remain as a full assessment of income and expenditure, however, we will be introducing some updates to further protect your clients from leveraging their personal income too highly. Please click here to view our maximum loan sizes by property type.

Maximum exposure limits

We have introduced a cap to subject property loan size at 10x your clients gross personal income (excludes existing rental income).

Note – Our existing policy on overall Buy to Let exposure will remain as per the current rules:

  • Buy to Let Total Exposure with Barclays to £3m and 6 Buy to Lets;
  • Overall Buy to Let Total Exposure across all lenders to £4.5m and 10 Buy to Lets.

Minimum ICR at a representative pay rate

Some applications may be declined moving forward if the Pay Rate ICR <100%. This will trigger where subject property rental income is not sufficient to cover a representative monthly mortgage payment.

You can use our affordability calculator to check whether your client meets our criteria and the maximum borrowing amount available before submitting a case.

Thank you for your support