When civil servant Andy Enrique, 38, bought his three-bedroom, semi-detached home in Raleigh, Essex, in January 2023, he considered copying something his parents had done – and getting a lodger.
“My parents have had the same lodger for 20 years and she’s now part of the family,” he says.
When Andy found himself facing rising housing costs as his tracker mortgage rate rose, this aspiration for a lodger became a necessity.
During the buying process, Andy had hoped rates would come down and opted for a tracker mortgage. This sort of mortgage stays a certain percentage – in Andy’s case, 0.78 percentage points – above the Bank of England base rate.
When the rate rises, so does the mortgage cost and as it goes down, the mortgage cost does too.
This worked out initially as 4.28 per cent but by the time he had completed on his house purchase, it had gone up to 4.78 per cent after a base rate rise and meant Andy was paying £1,498 a month in repayments.
A month later, he got a letter saying that it was going up yet again after another rate rise. He then decided it was time to get a fix.
His new two-year, fixed-rate mortgage was at 4.7 per cent and saw him paying £1,364 a month.
At the same time, his electricity and gas bills were significantly more than he was expecting.
He said: “I had moved from a one-bedroom studio to a three-bedroom house and what scared me was when I was given an annual quote of £5,000 for the electricity and gas.
“With the estimated annual usage, I thought there’s no way I could afford that and the mortgage. I was struggling and had to reassess.”
In March 2023, Andy placed an advert on SpareRoom for his loft room which also comes with an ensuite. He asked for £750 a month including bills. Lodger-landlords get a tax-free allowance of £7,500 a year if they take in a lodger and Andy used this as a guide for his initial asking price.
“I was inundated. The first viewing was someone I had reached out to, as I liked the look of their profile. He was a policeman and stayed for six months until he was relocated elsewhere. We got on as friends and I’m still in touch with him,” he said.
When his first lodger left, just before Christmas 2023, Andy decided to put the room on SpareRoom for a bit extra – £950 a month, including bills – but only rent it to the right person, whom he quickly found.
“The second lodger is still with me and works in recruitment,” he says.
“I think I’ve been really lucky; I’ve had two great people whom I consider as friends. They both like football, which I am really into as well.”
Andy is clear on his SpareRoom profile and in communications that potential lodgers need to have a clean criminal record and that his house is a working house rather than a party house.
“When I show them around, I do a vibe check and set their expectations; Monday to Friday, I’m working, and sometimes at home, so we need to set some ground rules,” he says.
“Also, you can’t bring someone back that you’ve just met that night. It’s important to be up-front about your expectations.”
Andy knows pretty quickly after meeting potential lodgers whether they are suitable and has had some view the property who he has quickly rejected.
While Andy says he has been lucky, he admits you do have to be mindful that everyone’s standards are not necessarily the same as yours and make allowances for that.
The extra income from a lodger pays for two-thirds of Andy’s mortgage, which is now fixed at 3.8 per cent and works out at £1,300 per month. As well as helping him with the bills, it also means he does not have to take on as many overtime shifts. He works 24 hours, the equivalent of three full-time days, less a month.
“I work 24 hours a month less because I have a lodger. I still work some overtime, but it’s now because I want to and not because I have to,” he says.
With this extra time – which equates to three working days a month – Andy has developed an app, Overtime Live Shift Tracker, that counts overtime for public sector shift workers such as prison officers, nurses and civil servants, working out how much extra they are earning.
“I’ve used AI to develop this app and having a lodger has given me more time to do this,” he says.
“With my lodger income, I have also paid for a developer licence and bought a MacBook and an Apple developer account in order to get the app onto the Apple App Store.”
Without the extra time and money afforded by having a lodger, Andy would never been able to work on his side hustle.
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He has also managed to use some of the income to upgrade his house with solar panels which help with his energy bills and update the ensuite bathroom.
“I was always looking to get financial help from a lodger, but the goal was brought forward because of the bills and the mortgage going up,” he says.
Despite Andy’s positive experience, SpareRoom has found that the number of lodger room ads has fallen 2.5 per cent this year, the first decrease since the pandemic halted the rental market.
To help boost rental supply, the website is calling on the Government to refresh the Rent-a-Room scheme which allows lodger-landlords to earn £7,500 a year without paying tax and has not been updated since 2016.
It flags that, over the past five years, the UK’s average room rent has risen 29 per cent from £580 per month in 2020 to £749 per month in 2025. The tax-free allowance has not increased accordingly.
“The last time the Rent-a-Room scheme was altered, supply rose and remained at healthy levels until the pandemic. A booster shot in the arm is what’s needed now. We know the administrative burden of having to fill out a tax return does deter people from renting out rooms, so the tax-free threshold needs to reflect rents today,” says Matt Hutchinson, director of SpareRoom.
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