Buy to let remortgage advice: three options at deal expiry, priced properly

The three options when your buy-to-let deal expires

Do nothing and you roll onto the lender's reversion rate, currently 8 to 9 percent at most buy-to-let lenders. On a £200,000 interest-only loan that is roughly £1,400 a month against £840 on a 5 percent fix, so the cost of drift is about £560 a month. The question is never whether to act, it is which of three routes to take.

Remortgage to a new lender. The whole market is in play, you can capital raise, restructure the term, or change the loan size. Costs: valuation (often free on remortgage products), legals (often included), lender arrangement fee (typically 2 to 3 percent on the keenest rates, or a fixed fee on higher rates), and four to eight weeks of process. This route wins when the market has moved in your favour or you need to raise money.

Product transfer with your existing lender. A new rate on the existing loan, usually no valuation, no legals, minimal underwriting, completion in days. The limits: the loan amount generally cannot increase, and retention pricing is set against your inertia, not against the market. The correct use of a product transfer is when the existing lender's retention rate genuinely beats the open market net of costs, or when something about the property or your circumstances has changed in a way that would make a fresh application harder.

Further advance. Additional borrowing from your current lender on top of the existing loan, usually as a separate sub-account on its own rate. Useful when your main deal still has time and early repayment charges to run, but you want to release equity now without paying the ERC. The blended rate across both sub-accounts is the number that matters, and we calculate it against a full remortgage including the ERC before recommending either.

The maths: a £200,000 loan compared three ways

A landlord with a £200,000 interest-only loan on a £300,000 property (67 percent LTV), three months from expiry, wanting £40,000 of equity for a refurbishment. Indicative figures as of June 2026.

Here the full remortgage delivers the capital at the lowest blended cost, but move the inputs slightly, a smaller raise, a keener retention rate, an ERC still running, and the answer flips. This is why we price all three on every case rather than defaulting to the route that pays a broker most.

Capital raising: what lenders will and will not fund

The purpose of the raise determines the panel. Onward property purchase is accepted by virtually every buy-to-let lender. Refurbishment of rental stock, including EPC works, is widely accepted. Deposits for exchanged purchases, repaying other buy-to-let debt and transferring equity in a divorce are mainstream. The panel narrows sharply for personal debt consolidation, tax bills, gifting to family and business injection into an unrelated trading company, and a stated purpose of "no specific purpose" closes most doors.

The raise is also capped by the stress test, not just by LTV. At 75 percent LTV a lender may be willing in principle, but if the rent will not cover the stressed interest on the bigger loan at 125 or 145 percent ICR, the maximum loan falls to whatever the rent supports. Run the figures on our buy-to-let stress test calculator before fixing on a target amount, and read our Section 24 guide if you hold property in personal name, because the tax drag changes what a sensible raise looks like.

The portfolio overlay: why four properties changes every remortgage

If you hold four or more mortgaged buy-to-lets, the PRA's portfolio landlord rules apply to every remortgage you do, even a like-for-like switch on a single flat. The lender must review your whole portfolio: a full schedule of every property, an aggregate LTV check (most cap the background book at 65 to 75 percent), and a background stress test that re-prices all your existing debt at a notional rate and checks the combined rents still cover it.

Unprepared, this is where remortgages stall, because an underwriter querying a schedule line by line adds weeks. Prepared, it adds a day or two. We maintain a lender-formatted portfolio schedule for every portfolio client and submit it with the application. The full mechanics are on our portfolio landlord mortgages page.

Timing: the six-month runway

Start six months before your product end date. Mortgage offers are typically valid for 3 to 6 months depending on the lender, so an application submitted at the six-month mark can secure today's rate and complete on the day your early repayment charge falls away. If rates fall between offer and completion, we re-broke to the cheaper product; most lenders allow a product switch before completion, and where they do not, a fresh application usually still beats sitting on the old offer.

The expensive mistakes are both timing mistakes: starting at six weeks out and spending a month or two on the reversion rate, or remortgaging early and paying a 3 to 5 percent ERC that no rate saving recovers. We diarise every client's product end dates and open the file at the six-month point as standard.

Personal name into an SPV is a sale, not a remortgage

A regular request: "remortgage my flat into my limited company." There is no such product. The company is a separate legal person, so the transfer is a sale by you and a purchase by the company at market value. That means a purchase mortgage to the SPV (priced with the usual 0.2% to 0.5% limited-company premium), stamp duty including the surcharge on the full market value, potential capital gains tax on your disposal, and two sets of conveyancing.

For higher-rate taxpayers carrying Section 24 drag, the move can still pay for itself over a reasonable holding period, and partnership incorporation relief helps some established landlords. But it has to be costed as a transaction with a payback period, not treated as an admin exercise. Our guide to transferring property to a limited company works through the full arithmetic, and our limited company buy-to-let page covers the lending side.

BTL remortgage rates, June 2026

Indicative ranges across our panel as of June 2026, at up to 75 percent LTV on standard single-let property.

Ranges are indicative, as of June 2026. Five-year fixes are usually stressed at pay rate; shorter products at pay rate plus a margin or a notional floor, which often makes the 5-year fix the larger maximum loan as well as the lower rate.

Worked example: remortgage with a capital raise for the next purchase

A higher-rate taxpayer owns a single-let terrace in personal name, valued at £260,000, renting at £1,350 a month, with £140,000 outstanding on a fix expiring in five months. She wants the maximum sensible raise towards her next purchase, which will be bought in an SPV.

LTV ceiling: 75 percent of £260,000 is £195,000. Stress ceiling: annual rent of £16,200 against a 145 percent ICR at a 5.15 percent pay-rate stress gives a maximum loan of £16,200 ÷ 1.45 ÷ 0.0515, roughly £217,000. The LTV cap binds first, so the maximum loan is £195,000, releasing £55,000 before costs. She took a 5-year fix at 5.15 percent with a £1,999 fixed fee rather than the 4.79 percent with a 3 percent fee: on a £195,000 loan the lower fee saved £3,851 against an interest saving of £3,510 over five years, so the headline-rate product was the wrong buy.

The £55,000 covered a 25 percent deposit plus stamp duty on a £170,000 purchase in her new SPV. Because the remortgage took her to four mortgaged properties, the SPV purchase was underwritten as a portfolio case, which we had packaged for in advance. Total time, both transactions: nine weeks.

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