Flexible mortgages have begun to pop up in the market for non-conforming mortgages. Buy to let investor landlords are one group of borrowers that are ideally positioned to benefit from the flexible features that some mortgages offer.

Flexible buy to let mortgages are a very recent arrival in UK, but it is becoming more and more common for buy to let mortgages to offer certain flexible features such as daily interest, overpayment and lump sum payments.

If, as it should do for most of the year, the rental income exceeds the costs of running the property and servicing the mortgage debt, then the surplus can be ploughed back into the loan instead of being kept in a separate savings account.

This then allows the investor to either gain full ownership of the property more quickly by paying off the loan early, or else release the equity at an earlier stage in order to grow their property portfolio.

A couple of other features of flexible mortgages can be very useful for the buy to let investor:

• If rent is collected in weekly or fortnightly instalments, then a flexible mortgage that allows payments to be made to match the frequency allows the borrower to pay off the capital more quickly, as they do not have to wait until a full month's worth of rent is collected.
• Given that void periods generally affect most properties at some point each year, a mortgage that allows the borrower to take a payment holiday can be useful in helping to get through periods when a rental property is unoccupied.