How much could you borrow?
See what a wide panel of lenders might lend you based on your contractor income — built by our sister site MortgageAffordability.
This is an information tool, not advice: it doesn't give a recommendation, a decision in principle, or a guarantee any lender will lend to you.
The affordability check runs your income and deposit against a wide panel of UK lenders to give you an indicative borrowing range. It works from a single annual income figure — it doesn't know you're a contractor, and it has no view of the one thing that decides most contractor mortgage outcomes: which lender you approach, and how that lender annualises a day rate.
That gap matters more for contractors than almost any other income type. Our own analysis of thirteen contractor-friendly lenders found that a contractor earning £500 a day, five days a week, is assessed as anywhere from £102,500 (Coventry BS, on its 41-week multiplier) to £130,000 (Nationwide, 52 weeks, umbrella and fixed-term contractors only) of annual income — a £27,500 gap on paper income alone, from the identical day rate. Run through an indicative income multiple, that becomes a swing of roughly £123,000 in borrowing power. See the full breakdown in the Contractor Day-Rate Lottery.
Treat the affordability figure below as a ceiling on borrowing power for a generic income of that size — then check which of our verified panel would actually annualise your specific day rate, and at what multiplier, using the tools linked below before you rely on it.
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How contractor income changes the picture
An affordability range doesn't tell you whether a lender will even annualise your day rate, or which of the panel would give you the more generous read. From our own verified contractor criteria: at £500/day, Kensington uses a 48-week multiplier for a straight day-rate contract (£120,000 assessed income) while Coventry BS uses 41 weeks for the identical rate (£102,500) — about a 17% difference in assessed income before a single lender's income multiple is even applied. See the full 13-lender spread on the day-rate calculator.
CIS-paid subcontractors face a separate quirk: HMRC deducts tax at source (20% if registered, 30% if not) before you see the money, but lenders that assess CIS income on a gross-favourable route — NatWest and Skipton among our verified panel — use your pre-deduction figure, not what actually lands in your bank. A lender using the self-employed route instead assesses your post-deduction declared profit, which can materially understate a rising day rate. Run your own gross vs. net figures on the CIS mortgage calculator.
Timing rules bite too: several lenders on our panel cap the gap they'll tolerate between contracts at around 6 weeks before flagging a case as at-risk — but Skipton doesn't hard-decline for a longer gap at all, it pro-rates your assessed income instead (an 8-week gap uses 38 weeks in the annualisation rather than 46). Check your own gap, time-left and contracting history on the contract timeline checker.
FAQ
Does the affordability check know I'm a contractor?
No — it works from a single annual income figure, the same as it would for a salaried applicant. It won't reflect how a lender annualises your day rate, which weeks-per-year multiplier it uses, or whether your engagement type (umbrella, limited company, CIS, fixed-term) even qualifies for that lender's contractor route at all. Use it for a borrowing-power ceiling on a generic income figure, then run your actual day rate through the day-rate calculator.
I'm paid through an umbrella company — should I enter my day rate or my payslip figure?
Enter the annual figure you'd expect a lender to actually assess, not your headline day rate — an umbrella's employer-side deductions mean the two aren't the same number, and only some lenders account for that gap before annualising. See which lenders accept umbrella income, and how, on the contract-type checker.
Is this the same lender panel as your other contractor tools?
No — this affordability check is built and run by our sister site, MortgageAffordability, against its own wide lender panel. Our contractor tools (day-rate calculator, contract-type checker, CIS mortgage calculator, timeline and LTV checkers) are built separately, on a panel of lenders whose contractor-specific criteria we've individually verified.
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