The UK’s first no-strings mortgage for Airbnb holiday lets has been launched, opening up the short-term lets platform to a much wider pool of potential landlords.
West Midlands lender The Tipton & Coseley Building Society says its new two-year discount rate mortgage for holiday lets can be taken out by borrowers looking specifically to rent their properties out via the short-term lets platform.
The building society says that, unlike other lenders, it sets no limit on the number of weeks a borrower can rent their property out via Airbnb and that whole-property rentals are allowed too.
Despite hostility from within the financial industry, some lenders have been enabling borrowers to rent out their properties via Airbnb but have placed restrictions on how they rent them out and how long for.
Rental difficulties
But even if borrowers can now get mortgages for Airbnb properties, it’s not always that easy to rent them out.
Edinburgh flat owner Nicola Golden yesterday launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise £112,000 in order to take City of Edinburgh council to court. The dispute is over an enforcement notice the council has issued against her property, banning her from renting it out via short-term let platforms.
The council alleges that the property is ‘solely’ being used for this kind of rental – something Golden disputes – and also that guests have been disturbing local residents in the apartment building.
She bought the property in 1996, lived in it for three years and then rented it out using a traditional long-term contract via a letting agent before starting renting it out via Airbnb last year.
“If I was running a party flat, if I was disrespectful to my community, if my guests disrupted the local life, or if I was running a 24/7 365 day a year hotel with no attention to health and safety or noise disturbance then maybe my property would need to be reviewed – but the evidence clearly shows that I am not,” she told The Scotsman.
Rentals in Scotland via platforms such as Airbnb are worth £723 million a year, according to the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers.
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