To understand this you have to put yourselves in the lenders shoes, say you rented out your property and the tenant didn't pay the rent, for whatever reason, you now can't pay the mortgage and default, the lender is in the position where they want to repossess the property but the property is now occupied by squatters who can only be evicted by court order!

In ''normal'' circumstances most lenders are happy to let owners rent their properties, the basic safeguards they need are a reasonable amount of equity, when the market was stable 15% was deemed adequate, They would normally ask for affordability assurance, for times when the property is empty, most specialist lenders would just require you to state that you could afford it!!

A normal buy to let requires

A shorthold tenancy

Landlords safety certificates mainly for gas appliances, local councils will fine landlords who do not have these certificates, if, there were an incident of carbon monoxide escape or poisoning.

In a practical situation you would want to find the ''best'' tenant you can find by doing adequate history and financial checks, if you [one] decides to use a managing agent, do as many checks on these as you can as 80% are useless, they are happy to take the rent but most [there are some good ones] do little for the management fees once the tenant is installed. You need to ask them what they will do and what they won't do then check this against their agreement with you!

Also remember bonds must now be paid into a guarantee scheme, you CAN do this independantly!

For the inexperienced 'landlord' all this seems forbidding but it is fairly straightforward, BUT you MUST get everything right from the start!! Good luck!