Yes, with your lender’s permission, and a residential mortgage almost never gives it by default. Which permission an Airbnb needs depends on which of three regulatory categories your mortgage sits in. Two of them carry protections written for consumers. The third does not, and you move into it by signing a declaration that says so.
Before any of that, one thing worth untangling. There are two different ninety-night limits floating around this question and they have nothing to do with each other. One is planning law. The other is a term some lenders put in their products. Clearing one of them tells you nothing at all about the other.
The two ninety-night limits, and why they get confused
London’s cap is statutory. Under section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015, using a London property as temporary sleeping accommodation for more than 90 nights in a calendar year is a change of use and needs planning permission. It counts per property across every platform and every direct booking combined, and it applies nowhere else in the country. The detail sits in our guide to what applies to your property, nation by nation, which owns that rule.
A lender’s ninety nights is a different animal. Where it exists, it is a term of a mortgage product: a number of nights a year the lender is content for you to let through a platform without a separate consent application. The lender sets it, it varies between lenders and between products from the same lender, and it changes when the product changes.
So satisfying the planning cap does nothing for your mortgage, and a mortgage that permits letting does nothing about the planning cap. An owner in Bristol or Exeter has no planning cap to satisfy and may still be in breach of their mortgage from the first booking.
Because those product terms move, what follows is the set of questions to put to your own lender. A table of lender names goes out of date within a season, and yours is the only lender whose answer counts.
Two limits, one number
Both are called ninety nights
One is a law. The other is a term in a contract you signed. Clearing one does nothing about the other.
London's planning cap
Fixed by section 44 of the Deregulation Act 2015. A calendar year, counted per property, with every platform and every direct booking added together.
Your lender's allowance
Set by the lender, where it is offered at all. It differs between products from one lender, and it changes when your product changes.
Outside London the left ring does not apply to you at all. The right one still does.
The three categories a mortgage can sit in
UK mortgage lending is split into three boxes by regulation. The box decides which rules the lender has to follow, and what you can do if the lender or the person advising you gets it wrong.
A regulated mortgage contract. Your ordinary residential mortgage. Article 61(3)(a) of the Regulated Activities Order sets the test: at the time the contract is entered into, a lender provides credit to an individual or to trustees, the borrower’s obligation to repay is secured by a mortgage on land in the United Kingdom, and at least 40% of that land is used, or is intended to be used, as or in connection with a dwelling. The Financial Conduct Authority’s mortgage conduct rules apply to it.
A consumer buy-to-let. The middle box, and the one that rarely gets a mention. It exists for people who let out a property they did not buy in order to let: you moved for work, you inherited a house, you moved in with a partner. Article 4 of the Mortgage Credit Directive Order 2015 defines it as a buy-to-let mortgage contract “not entered into by the borrower wholly or predominantly for the purposes of a business carried on, or intended to be carried on, by the borrower”. The Financial Ombudsman Service states the qualifying test in plain words: to qualify you must not already own any other rental properties, and must not have intended to rent the property out when you bought it. These sit under Part 3 of that Order, with firms on an FCA register.
Business buy-to-let and holiday let lending. The third box, and where a specialist short-let or holiday-let mortgage almost always sits. It is outside FCA mortgage regulation.
The middle box is worth dwelling on, because a good number of people who list a property on Airbnb arrived there by accident. They kept a flat when they moved. A parent died. A relationship changed. That is precisely the population the consumer buy-to-let regime was built for, and it is the population most likely to be handed a business product without anyone raising the question.
Which box you are in was decided the day you signed
The words doing the work in article 61(3)(a) are “at the time it is entered into”. The category is fixed when the contract is made, and it does not drift afterwards. That has one consequence owners find reassuring and a second they generally do not.
Moving out and listing the property does not reclassify your existing mortgage. If you took a residential mortgage on a home you were living in, it was a regulated mortgage contract then and it stays one now. Letting the property may well breach its terms, and that is a contractual problem between you and your lender. The regulatory protection on the contract survives it.
Remortgaging does reclassify it. A new contract gets tested afresh on its own facts, and those facts are that you do not live there and you are letting commercially.
So the step usually described as the tidy fix, moving to a specialist product, is also the step that changes your regulatory position. That is no argument against doing it. For many properties it is the right answer, because the property genuinely is a business. It is an argument for knowing what you are agreeing to at the moment you agree to it.
The declaration that moves you out of protection
The mechanism is three sentences on a form.
Article 61A of the Regulated Activities Order takes a contract out of regulation where it is entered into wholly or predominantly for the purposes of a business carried on by the borrower. Article 61A(3)(b) sets out what the borrower has to declare for that to be presumed:
- a statement that the agreement is entered into by the borrower wholly or predominantly for the purposes of a business carried on, or intended to be carried on, by the borrower
- a statement that the borrower understands that they will not have the benefit of the protection and remedies that would be available to them under the Act if the agreement were a regulated mortgage contract
- a statement that the borrower is aware that if they are in any doubt as to the consequences of the agreement not being regulated by the Act, they should seek independent legal advice
The second one is the whole thing. You confirm in writing that you understand you are giving up the protections and remedies, and once it is signed the business purpose is presumed.
One limit on that presumption is worth carrying with you. Under article 61A(4), the presumption does not apply where the lender, or a person acting on its behalf, knows or has reasonable cause to suspect that the agreement is not entered into wholly or predominantly for business purposes. A signature does not do the work on its own where the borrower’s circumstances plainly say something else.
How far the rulebook reaches
Three boxes, and a signature
Two facts about you settle the first two. Only the last one asks for your signature.
Your ordinary residential mortgage, judged on the day you signed it.
FCA mortgage conduct rules apply
For people who never set out to be landlords. You moved, you inherited, you kept it.
Its own registered regime
The step you take yourself
You sign a business-purpose declaration
It presumes the mortgage is for a business. Article 61A(4) removes that presumption where the lender knew, or had reasonable cause to suspect, otherwise.
Where a specialist holiday-let product almost always sits.
Outside FCA mortgage regulation
The rail fades and the marker empties as the protections fall away.
What consent to let actually gets you
Consent to let is a permission from your lender under the contract you already have. It is a contractual thing, and it leaves your regulatory category exactly where it was.
That makes it the cleanest route wherever it is available. The mortgage stays what it is, the protections stay what they were, and you hold written permission for the use.
The care needed is all in the wording. A consent letter describes a permitted use, and the description matters more than the fact of the permission. If the letter describes letting to a tenant, it is not obviously describing a run of two-night stays booked through a platform, and a consent that does not describe what you are actually doing is worth very little at the moment it gets read.
So ask the specific questions in writing, and keep the reply:
- Does this consent cover short-term and holiday letting, with guests staying a few nights at a time?
- Is it limited to a number of nights a year, or to a period of months, and what happens when that runs out?
- Does it change my rate, and is there a fee?
- Does it require anything else of me, such as a particular kind of insurance?
- Does it cover letting through a booking platform, and letting managed by an agent on my behalf?
The last one catches people out. An owner gets consent, appoints someone to run the property, and never checks whether the consent contemplated a third party doing the letting.
Where the consumer safety net stops
The Financial Ombudsman Service is direct about its own reach here. “Selling or broking buy-to-let mortgages is currently unregulated.” It can usually still consider a complaint against a lender, provided the lender is regulated by the FCA.
Complaints about a broker are narrower. The Ombudsman will consider one where the deal was done between 1 April 2014 and 21 March 2016, when buy-to-let broking was a regulated activity; where the buy-to-let advice came alongside residential mortgage advice in the same transaction; or where “the advice you took was about a mortgage that either was, or should have been, a consumer buy-to-let (CBTL) mortgage”.
That third limb is the sentence to remember. If your circumstances made you a consumer buy-to-let borrower and you were advised into a business product anyway, the advice is something the Ombudsman can look at.
There is a further limit, again in the Ombudsman’s own words: because letting a property means you are “technically operating a business”, a complaint against your lender is only investigated where you satisfy the criteria for the small businesses the service can help.
None of that is a reason to avoid a specialist product. It is the reason to know which box you were in before someone moved you out of it.
What happens if you run an Airbnb without telling your mortgage lender
Letting in breach of your mortgage terms is a breach of contract. It is a civil matter between you and the lender, though how the property was described on the application can be a separate question.
It tends to surface in ordinary ways. An insurance claim, where the insurer asks what the property is used for. A remortgage or a product transfer, where the new lender asks the same. A neighbour who sends a listing to the freeholder. A valuer who walks into a hallway with a key safe and a welcome folder.
What the lender can then do sits in your contract, and it usually runs in this order: ask you to stop and to confirm you have; charge for a retrospective consent, or move you to a different product and rate; require repayment of the loan; and, at the far end, seek possession through the courts.
That last step is where a lot of writing on this subject stops, for effect. It is worth saying plainly that it is the rare end of a long road, and that almost everything is resolved in the first two steps. The realistic reason to sort the permission out first lives in the middle of that list. Those steps are expensive, they arrive at the worst possible moment (a claim, a sale, a remortgage), and one letter at the start avoids all of them.
The order we check these in
When a property comes to us, the permissions get worked through before anything else, and in a fixed order, because each one can undo the one above it.
- The lease, if the property is leasehold. A user covenant limiting the flat to use as a private residence can prohibit short lets on its own, whatever the letting clause says, which is why it comes before the mortgage. It is set out in what a lease has to say before a flat can be let nightly.
- The mortgage. Which of the three categories it sits in, and what its terms say about letting.
- The consent, in writing, describing nightly stays specifically.
- The insurance, with short-term letting named on the schedule.
- The local rules, which differ by nation and add the planning cap in London.
- Then, and only then, the numbers.
Which category the property itself falls into is a separate question with separate deciders, and the way a property gets classified for rates, tax and planning works through those.
That last step is what a free Airbnb valuation puts a figure on. The five above it decide whether there is a figure worth having, which is why we ask about them first. Where a permission is the obstacle, we say so early, while it is still cheap to find out.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need my mortgage lender’s permission to run an Airbnb?
If there is a mortgage on the property, assume yes until the lender tells you otherwise in writing. Residential mortgage terms generally restrict letting without consent, and plenty of buy-to-let terms restrict short letting specifically. Ask for consent that covers short-term letting by name, get the reply in writing, and do it before you spend on the setup.
Does consent to let cover short-term letting?
Only if it says so. Consent to let is a permission for a described use, and a letter written around letting to a tenant is not describing a run of nightly bookings. Ask the question in those words, and ask whether the consent covers letting through a platform and letting managed by an agent on your behalf.
Is a holiday let mortgage regulated by the FCA?
Usually not. A specialist holiday let or business buy-to-let product sits outside FCA mortgage regulation, which is why completing one normally involves signing the declaration in article 61A(3)(b) confirming that you understand you will not have the protections available under the Act. The Ombudsman can still usually consider a complaint against an FCA-regulated lender, subject to its small business criteria.
What happens if I have already been letting without consent?
Take advice, then approach the lender. Almost all of these end with a consent granted after the fact, a product move, or a rate change, because a lender’s interest is in the loan performing and the security being properly insured. The situations that get expensive are the ones discovered by somebody else first, most often an insurer at the point of a claim.
Sources
- legislation.gov.uk: Regulated Activities Order 2001, article 61 (definition of a regulated mortgage contract, the “at the time it is entered into” test and the 40% dwelling condition; checked 2026-08-29)
- legislation.gov.uk: Regulated Activities Order 2001, article 61A (contracts outside regulation, the three prescribed statements in the business-purpose declaration, and the limit on the presumption where the lender has reasonable cause to suspect otherwise; checked 2026-08-29)
- legislation.gov.uk: Mortgage Credit Directive Order 2015, article 4 (definition of a consumer buy-to-let mortgage contract; checked 2026-08-29)
- Financial Conduct Authority Handbook: PERG 4.10B, regulation of buy to let lending (the consumer buy-to-let regime under Part 3 of the MCD Order, and the requirement that the land is to be occupied as a dwelling on the basis of a rental agreement; checked 2026-08-29)
- Financial Ombudsman Service: buy-to-let mortgages (buy-to-let selling and broking unregulated; complaints against lenders and brokers; the consumer buy-to-let qualifying test; the small business criteria; checked 2026-08-29)
- legislation.gov.uk: Deregulation Act 2015, section 44 (London’s 90-night change of use provision; checked 2026-08-29)
