Something changed in the buy-to-let mortgage market over June and into July, and if you’ve got deals on the horizon – or a remortgage coming up – it’s worth knowing about. Multiple lenders have been cutting BTL rates in quick succession, and a couple of the bigger names have made meaningful changes to their lending criteria as well. The cumulative effect is that the financing environment for property investors is starting to look noticeably better than it did at the start of this year.
That doesn’t mean BTL mortgages are cheap by historical standards. But there’s genuine movement in the market right now, and the people who benefit most will be the ones who understand what’s changed and act on it.
What’s happening to rates
The average fixed-rate BTL mortgage sat at 5.42% on 1 July 2026. That sounds high, and in isolation it is – but it’s the average across all lenders and all products, which masks what’s happening at the sharper end of the market. The best 3-year fixed-rate BTL available at time of writing is 3.42% from Vida Homeloans, and the best 5-year fixed is 3.99% from The Mortgage Works, which is the BTL lending arm of Nationwide.
A sub-4% five-year fix for buy-to-let would have seemed remarkable not long ago, and for investors who’ve been sitting on tracker products or put off refinancing by the rate environment, these numbers are materially better than rolling onto a standard variable rate by default.
HSBC cut selected BTL rates by up to 0.11% across two-year and five-year fixed products in recent weeks, and LendInvest reduced rates across its two-year and five-year BTL range by around 0.1%. Several other lenders followed suit in quick succession. When you see that pattern – multiple lenders cutting within a short window – it usually means competitive pressure is building. There’s a degree of momentum here that wasn’t present six months ago.
The criteria changes that are more significant than the headlines
The rate movements get the attention, but the criteria changes are arguably more significant for investors with particular circumstances.
LendInvest has removed its minimum income requirement across its entire product range. This covers standard BTL, limited company mortgages, HMO and multi-unit freehold blocks. If you were previously rejected or restricted because your declared income didn’t meet a lender threshold, that barrier is now gone with this lender. You still need to have some income, and the rental income still needs to support the mortgage at the stress rate – but you no longer need to hit a specific personal income figure to be considered.
HSBC has changed its rental calculation for BTL mortgages, which in practical terms means it will lend more against the same rental income than it would have before. This is the kind of change that gets buried in the small print but makes a difference in practice. If you had a deal that was just outside HSBC’s criteria, it’s worth going back to your broker and running it again.
Refinancing activity is picking up
The wider data backs up what brokers are saying anecdotally. Almost 40% of investors with borrowing in place expect to remortgage in the next twelve months, and among those with four or more BTL mortgages that figure rises to 56%. Portfolio investors are almost twice as likely as smaller investors to be active in the refinancing market – reflecting both the volume of product maturities and the fact that larger portfolios need active management to stay financially efficient.
If you’re in that group – or approaching the end of a fixed-rate period – now is a good time to be doing the analysis rather than leaving it until you roll onto the lender’s standard variable rate, which will almost always be a more expensive outcome.
What to actually do with this
First, check when your current fixed-rate period ends. If it’s within the next six months, start the conversation with a broker now. Most lenders will allow you to lock in a product three to six months before your current deal expires, which means you can secure today’s rates without waiting until the last minute.
Second, if you’ve previously ruled out deals because the financing didn’t stack – the rent coverage was marginal, the income requirement ruled you out, or the stress testing didn’t work – run them past a broker again. The market has moved. A no from six months ago isn’t necessarily a no today.
The general expectation among brokers is that rates continue to edge down through 2026, though the pace depends on what the Bank of England does with base rate and how lenders respond to funding pressures. Even as I write this there’s new speculation rates may actually increase by year-end because of events in the middle east, and the knock-on effect on the price of oil. Who knows? No one. Waiting for rates to fall further is a bet, not a strategy. So is doing nothing. What you can control is making sure you know your current options and aren’t paying more than you need to be.
By the way, if you don’t have a mortgage broker, or you’d like a second opinion, I’ll be very happy to put you in touch with my very good mortgage broker.
Just email me: thepropertyteacher@gmail.com and I’ll happily make the introduction.
Here’s to successful property investing.
Peter Jones
Author, property investor & ex-Chartered Surveyor
P.S. If you’d like help thinking through your buy-to-let strategy properly, you might find my Successful Property Investor’s Strategy Workshop useful.
You can find out more here: https://thepropertyteacher.co.uk/the-successful-property-investors-strategy-workshop/
