Increasing my mortgage to raise a deposit for BtL

ijrwe · 18 April 2015 at 3:44PM

I've completed quite a successful house renovation (if I may say so myself...) and really enjoyed it. I'm keen to purchase a second property which would end up as a buy-to-let. I have only about £5k in savings these days, pretty useless on its own, and would like to consider borrowing more on my current mortgage to fund a second property (which I understand to be a fairly common tactic, right?).

> My current mortgage stands at -37k on a property worth about 100k.

> I have a lodger whose rent is 165% of my monthly mortgage payments.

> My total income is quite low and from various sources (agency work, zero-hour contracts, odd jobs), totalling about 1k/month but quite hard to prove. I don't have a proper, regular job but I did when I originally got my mortgage.

> I've never had any difficulties paying my mortgage, DD every month.

1) Does additional borrowing depend a lot on my current income?
2) If I tell them it's for a BtL deposit, does that encourage them?
3) Might I jeopardise my current mortgage by revealing to the lender my new, lower income?

I've looked on my lender's website and I do pass their first test - I've had a "continual relationship" with them for over two years, and they offer up to 85% LTV on additional loans. Given that I have "used" 37% of that so far (37k on a 100k property), I stand to borrow up to a further 48k, right?

I will conduct some enquiries but I wanted to ask here first before I put my foot in it and go about the application in the wrong way!

Thanks for any advice.