How you would fund it
Most people fund a garden home by releasing equity from the house they already own. Lenders treat two approaches very differently, and that changes both the rate and how much you can release.
The rent and the tax on it
Your lender will not count this rent when it assesses you, and the way it is taxed depends on whether the garden home is let under Rent-a-Room or as a separate tenancy.
Solar and battery
The panels sit on the garden home roof, but the unit shares the main house supply. The saving lands on your own bill, not the tenant's.
Against the alternatives
The question is not whether a garden home earns something. It is whether it earns more than the next best thing you could do with the same money.
What this comparison does not say
A deposit account and a State Savings certificate are not what a garden home is. Those are liquid and can be sold in a Tuesday afternoon. A garden home is none of those things: it is illiquid, it is a single asset in a single back garden, it needs a tenant to earn anything at all, and it can go empty. The figure also leaves out any rise in the value of your property, which for most owners is the largest part of the case for building one. A higher number is not the same as a better decision.
Finance can be arranged
You do not need the full amount sitting in a bank account. Finance for a garden home can be arranged through our broker partner, subject to lender approval and the usual conditions. Most people fund it by releasing equity from the house they already own.
We build garden homes. We are not financial advisers and we will not tell you what you can borrow. Tell us where the build sits, who it is for and what it needs to do, and we will look at your own circumstances and tell you what is actually open to you, across every lender rather than just one.
Read this before you rely on it
Rent-a-Room is not confirmed for garden homes. Revenue has not published guidance that settles whether a self-contained unit in the garden of a family home qualifies. Treat the Rent-a-Room case as an assumption to check with an accountant, not as a fact.
The rates here are a snapshot, not an offer. They move. Every rate in this tool is an editable slider for that reason. What a lender will actually give you depends on your income, your existing borrowings and the property.
Nothing here is financial, tax or investment advice. The garden home figure is your own figures put through arithmetic, and the alternatives are long-run averages taken from published sources. Neither is a forecast.
The comparison figures are indicative. State Savings rates, deposit rates and long-run equity returns are quoted gross or after tax as marked, and change without notice. Past performance says nothing about what comes next.
No allowance is made here for any increase in the value of your house or the unit, for inflation, for void periods between tenants, or for the maintenance the building will need over decades.