Free buy-to-let spreadsheet template, in four columns
Why there is no file to download, and what to build instead. The four columns a first buy-to-let model needs, and where that model stops being useful.
Updated on 8 August 2026.
The short answer
Yes, the title promised a free buy-to-let spreadsheet, and there is no file here. There is a recipe instead, and it takes ten minutes. Four columns: purchase, finance, income, costs. On a £238,000 terrace in Leeds that sheet returns a 6.0% gross yield and £428 of year 1 cash. Then it stops.
Year 1 cash = £14,340 − £3,577 − £10,335 = £428
The sheet answers one question well: is this property worth a second look? It says nothing about year 3, when the fixed rate ends and the payment resets.
Why there is no file to download
A downloadable spreadsheet ages in a way the person downloading it cannot see. Rates move. Stamp duty bands move. The file keeps calculating with whatever was typed into it on the day it was built, and it never says so out loud.
Building the four columns yourself takes ten minutes and removes that problem. You pick the rate. You pick the void allowance. When an assumption turns out to be wrong, you know exactly which cell holds it.
The second reason is scope. A sheet that screens ten listings is a good sheet. A sheet that has to support a mortgage application is a different animal, and it grows into the kind of file where arithmetic mistakes hide.
What goes in the four columns
The four columns are purchase, finance, income and costs. Give every input its own cell. One long formula that squeezes all four into a single result is quicker to type and far harder to check.
| Column | Cells in it | The Leeds case |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase | price, stamp duty, legals, survey, product fee | £256,664 |
| Finance | loan, rate, interest-only or repayment | £178,500 at 5.79% |
| Income | monthly rent × 12 | £14,340 a year |
| Costs | agent, insurance, repairs, certificates, voids | £3,577 a year |
Label every cell, even when it feels pointless while you build it. A sheet you reopen in three months reads far less clearly than it did on day one. A header saying "rate %" beats an unnamed cell B4 every time.
The finance column needs one deliberate choice: interest-only or capital repayment. Interest-only is the usual shape of a British buy-to-let loan, so the sheet below assumes it. Add a repayment cell and the interest line has to fall every year, which is a second formula, not a second number.
Two formulas do the rest of the work.
Gross yield = £14,340 / £238,000 = 6.0%
Keep purchase costs as a list of separate lines rather than one lump. Stamp duty scales with the price, conveyancing barely does, and a product fee often does not move at all. Lumping them together hides that difference the moment you price a cheaper property.
A worked example: a terrace in Leeds
The Leeds case is a three-bedroom mid-terrace at £238,000, bought by a UK-resident landlord who already owns a home. Finance is a two-year fixed buy-to-let at 5.79%, interest-only, at 75% loan to value. Rent is £1,195 per calendar month.
| Purchase item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Purchase price | £238,000 |
| Stamp duty over the bands (2% on £113,000) | £2,260 |
| Additional property surcharge (5% of the price) | £11,900 |
| Conveyancing | £1,250 |
| Searches and disbursements | £350 |
| Survey (RICS Level 2) | £575 |
| Land Registry fee | £330 |
| Product fee | £1,999 |
| Total investment | £256,664 |
Stamp duty = 2% × £113,000 + 5% × £238,000 = £14,160
Stamp duty land tax applies in England and Northern Ireland only. The bands, the 5% additional property surcharge and the Scale 1 registration fee come from HMRC and HM Land Registry, checked on 8 August 2026. Conveyancing, survey and product fee are market indications for 2026, not published tariffs.
Rent brings in £14,340 a year. Running costs take £3,577 of that back out.
| Cost line | Per year |
|---|---|
| Letting agent, 10% plus VAT | £1,721 |
| Landlord insurance | £265 |
| Repairs and maintenance | £845 |
| Gas safety, EICR and licensing | £172 |
| Void and arrears allowance, 4% of rent | £574 |
| Ground rent and service charge (freehold) | — |
| Total | £3,577 |
The void allowance earns its own line rather than a footnote. Four percent of £14,340 is roughly a fortnight empty every year. Leaving that cell at zero is also an assumption, and a bolder one than most people intend.
Notice how stamp duty behaves when the price moves. Bid £268,000 instead, and the banded duty rises by £1,140, because part of the price crosses into the 5% band. The surcharge rises by a flat £1,500. A percentage cell handles both on its own. A hardcoded stamp duty figure does not, and it is the cell people forget to update.
| Figure | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Gross yield on the price | 6.0% | The number an agent quotes, before any cost at all |
| Gross yield on total investment | 5.6% | The same rent, against the cash the deal actually needs |
| Net yield on total investment | 4.2% | After running costs, before any interest |
| Year 1 cash before tax | £428 | Around £36 a month of headroom |
| Cash in at completion | £78,164 | Deposit of £59,500 plus £18,664 of buying costs |
| What the sheet does not show | — | Whether year 3 still looks anything like this |
What the sheet cannot tell you
The sheet cannot price a rate reset, because year 1 is the only year in it. The Leeds fix runs two years. Suppose the loan reverts to 6.90% in year 3, and rent grows 3% a year until then.
| Year | Rent | Costs | Interest | Cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1, on the fix | £14,340 | £3,577 | £10,335 | £428 |
| 3, if the fix held | £15,213 | £3,795 | £10,335 | £1,083 |
| 3, reverted to 6.90% | £15,213 | £3,795 | £12,317 | −£899 |
Between the first row and the last sits £1,327 a year. No cell in a year 1 sheet contains that swing, and no warning appears when you leave it out.
The second blind spot is the lender. A buy-to-let underwriter does not read your cash flow at all. It reads interest cover: rent against stressed interest. A common test is 145% cover at the pay rate plus two points, with a floor near 5.5%. Treat that as an indication, since every lender sets its own.
ICR = £1,195 / £1,159 = 1.03
At 7.79% the stressed interest is £1,159 a month. Rent covers it 1.03 times, nowhere near 145%. The sheet showed £428 of positive cash. On that test the same rent supports roughly £127,000 of borrowing, not £178,500, which is another £51,500 of deposit. Closing that gap is what a rental property stress test is for.
When your own sheet is enough, and when it is not
Your own sheet is enough for screening, and for nothing beyond it. The dividing line is not the quality of your formulas. It is reach: one year against a full term.
| Situation | Your own spreadsheet | BRIX Calc |
|---|---|---|
| Screening ten listings in an evening | Enough | Overkill |
| Backing a mortgage application | Not enough | DSCR for every year |
| Comparing interest-only with repayment | Not enough | Both terms side by side |
| Your own buy decision | Not enough | Full term, not one year |
A free project in BRIX Calc holds the same four columns and carries on where the sheet stops. It works stamp duty out from the England and Northern Ireland bands, surcharge included. It projects the whole term rather than year 1, with a debt service cover ratio for each year. The formulas are fixed, so a mistyped cell reference cannot quietly recalculate the answer.
What it does not do: it gives no tax advice, and it pulls in no market data. Rent, rate and costs stay your assumptions, and your responsibility.
Keeping the sheet honest
Keeping the sheet honest takes about two minutes per property. Change one input and check that only the figures that should move actually move. Change the rate, and the stamp duty line must sit perfectly still.
Then run the sheet at its edges. Put the rate at 0%. Put the term at one month. A sheet with a broken reference usually returns something absurd at the edges, while a sound one stays dull in a reassuring way.
One last check costs nothing. Type the rent as an annual figure in one run and as a monthly figure in the next, and see whether the yield changes by a factor of twelve. If it does not, a cell is multiplying somewhere you did not intend. British agents quote rent per calendar month and sometimes per week, so this trips up more sheets than it should.
Work it through yourself
Build the four columns for your whole shortlist, then take the strongest property further. Your first project in BRIX Calc is free, with the full term and the DSCR in view. PRO lifts the limit once you want several projects open at once. Start in the rental calculator, or check what PRO costs on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Why does BRIX Calc not hand out a free Excel template?
Because a template invites a decision built on a single year, and that is where buy-to-let plans come apart. Screening in a sheet is genuinely fine, so the recipe sits here in full. For everything after screening, one project in BRIX Calc is free, with the whole term in view.
Does the four-column sheet work for a refurbishment project?
Not directly, because the sheet is built around a running let with monthly rent. A refurbishment ends in a sale, so it needs different figures: return on investment, sale value per square foot, and the finance cost while the works run. Those measure one transaction rather than a rent stream.
How much time does this sheet actually save?
On a single property, almost none. Across a shortlist it adds up quickly. Ten listings priced, financed and costed in the same four columns take a few minutes each, against half an hour of retyping per property. The saving lives in the comparison, not in the first calculation.
Can I use the same sheet outside England?
Not without rebuilding the purchase column. Scotland charges LBTT and Wales charges LTT, each with its own bands and its own surcharge for an additional property. The stamp duty cells in the Leeds case hold for England and Northern Ireland alone. Rent, costs and finance carry over unchanged.