5 HMO Mortgage Deals That Just Dropped This Month

Why July 2026 Is a Genuine Inflection Point for HMO Finance

Cast your mind back to late 2023. Two-year fixed HMO rates at 75% LTV were sitting above 7%. Painful. Most investors I spoke to at the time had either paused acquisitions entirely or were stress-testing deals at yields that felt almost impossible to hit.

Fast forward to now. According to data tracked by HMO Mortgage Broker, those same two-year 75% LTV products had already compressed to the 4.5–5.2% range by Q4 2025. And then July 2026 happened.

Keystone Property Finance launched a dedicated HMO and multi-unit freehold block (MUFB) product range priced 15 basis points below their core buy-to-let offering — starting at 3.34%. That's the headline. But the story underneath it is more interesting: specialist lenders are now actively competing for HMO business in a way I haven't seen in years. That competition is what drives rates lower, and it's what creates the window you're looking at right now.

Separately, according to the Moneyfacts UK Mortgage Trends Treasury Report cited by [Mortgage Introducer](https://www.mpamag.com/uk/mortgage-industry/market-trends/mortgage-rates-record-steepest-monthly-fall-in-nearly-two-years/582091), fixed mortgage rates posted their steepest monthly fall since October 2024 in June 2026. The broader market tailwind is real — and HMO specialist products are catching that wind too.

The 5 Deals Worth Knowing About Right Now

I'm going to be direct here. These are the five product changes that matter most for HMO investors active in July 2026, sourced from Mortgage Introducer's week-ending 3 July 2026 roundup and the week-ending 10 July 2026 update from [Property Watchdog](https://propertywatchdog.co.uk/mortgage/uk-mortgage-rates-and-product-changes-week-ending-10-july-2026/). I'm not padding this list.

**1. Keystone Property Finance — HMO/MUFB Special from 3.34%** Keystone launched a dedicated HMO and MUFB range priced 15 basis points below their standard BTL core range. Starting rate: 3.34%. This is the deal that broke the sub-3.4% barrier for specialist HMO products this cycle. Keystone has historically been one of the more flexible lenders on complex HMO structures, so this isn't just a rate story — it's a product-quality story too. Worth a conversation with a broker who knows their criteria.

**2. ModaMortgages — Two-Year Fix from 3.39% (Small HMOs)** Moda came in close behind Keystone. Their two-year fix for small HMOs starts at 3.39%, and their five-year fix sits at 4.94% for the same segment. If you're building a portfolio of smaller HMOs — say, four to six beds — Moda's underwriting on this range deserves a look. The two-year option is particularly interesting if you believe rates will continue falling and you want to refinance again in 2028.

**3. Paragon — £1,000 Cashback Across 21 Five-Year Fixes (Including HMOs)** Paragon added £1,000 cashback across 21 five-year fixed products, and HMO products are included. Paragon is one of the most established specialist BTL lenders in the UK — they know HMO underwriting. The cashback won't change your investment thesis, but it offsets a chunk of arrangement fees and makes the true cost of the product more competitive than the headline rate alone suggests.

**4. CHL (Castle & Cooke Home Loans) — Light Refurb HMO Products** CHL launched a light refurb HMO range: two-year fix from 4.50%, five-year fix from 6.21%, up to 75% LTV. This one's for a specific use case — buying an HMO that needs work before it can be tenanted or relicensed. Most lenders won't touch light refurb HMOs at all, so CHL filling this gap is genuinely useful. The five-year rate at 6.21% looks high relative to the others, but you're paying for the flexibility of lending against a property mid-refurb. That's a different risk profile.

**5. Foundation Home Loans — Across-the-Board HMO Rate Cuts (Up to 25bps)** Foundation cut rates by up to 25 basis points across their HMO range as part of a wider BTL repricing. They also lowered their minimum property value to £70,000 — which opens their products to more of the northern and midlands HMO market where values are lower but yields are often stronger. This is the deal that's easiest to overlook because it wasn't a single headline number, but for investors focused on high-yield HMOs in lower-value areas, Foundation's criteria change could matter more than Keystone's headline rate.

Why You Can't Just Walk Into Barclays for an HMO Mortgage

This is the part that trips up a lot of first-time HMO investors, and even some experienced landlords who've only ever dealt with standard BTL.

HMO mortgages are specialist products. Most high-street banks — Barclays, HSBC, NatWest — either don't offer them at all or have criteria so restrictive they're effectively off the table for most investors. The lenders doing the heavy lifting in this space are names like Shawbrook, Paragon, Kent Reliance, Aldermore, The Mortgage Works, and Vida — as noted by specialist broker Quartico. And now Keystone, Moda, CHL, and Foundation are competing hard in that same pool.

The practical consequence: you need a broker who actually works in this market every day. Not a generalist who'll run a comparison on a standard BTL sourcing tool and come back blank. A specialist.

Freeing up equity in an existing portfolio is even harder. I hear this constantly from landlords who've built up significant paper wealth in their properties but can't access it to fund the next acquisition. Lenders apply different stress tests to HMO remortgages, the licensing requirements add complexity, and if you're trying to pull equity from a mixed portfolio — some standard BTL, some HMO — the picture gets complicated fast.

This is precisely why ZARSK's regulated finance partners exist. They match investors to the specialist HMO lenders in this list and others, and they're particularly experienced at the equity-release side — the bit most brokers find difficult. You can find them at [zarsk.co.uk/finance-property](https://www.zarsk.co.uk/finance-property).

How to Read These Rates Without Fooling Yourself

A quick note on rate literacy, because I see investors make this mistake regularly.

The 3.34% Keystone rate and the 3.39% Moda rate are real — but they're entry-level rates on specific LTV and property-type combinations. Your actual rate will depend on your LTV, your personal income and credit profile, the property's HMO licence status, the number of bedrooms, whether it's a limited company purchase, and the lender's current ICR (interest coverage ratio) stress test.

Moneyfacts data reported by [Mortgage Introducer](https://www.mpamag.com/uk/mortgage-industry/market-trends/mortgage-rates-record-steepest-monthly-fall-in-nearly-two-years/582091) shows the average two-year fixed rate across all products in July 2026 at 5.52% — which tells you the HMO specialist rates above are meaningfully below the broad market average, but also that not everyone qualifies for the floor rate.

Also worth noting: the average shelf-life of a mortgage deal right now is just 14 days according to the same Moneyfacts report. These products move fast. The Keystone and Moda rates I've listed here were live as of the week ending 3 July 2026. By the time you read this, they may have been repriced — up or down. The direction of travel is encouraging, but the specific numbers require verification with a broker before you act on them.

Consider consulting a qualified financial adviser or regulated mortgage broker before making any borrowing decisions. This article is for information purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

Here's what I actually think is happening: specialist HMO lenders have worked out that the investor who buys a well-run six-bed HMO in a commuter town is a better credit risk than their rates historically implied. The compression from 7%+ to sub-3.4% in under three years isn't just a function of swap rates — it's a function of lenders getting smarter about HMO risk. That trend has further to run. The investors who build broker relationships now, understand the specialist lender landscape, and have their portfolio structures clean enough to access these products — they're the ones who'll be buying while everyone else is still waiting for 'certainty'. There's never certainty. There are just windows.