My wife and I own a property outright in London. We would like to move out of London and purchase a property that we will run as a Bed and Breakfast, up North.

We've had the house in London valued at around £380 000, with a rental income of £500 per week. The properties we are looking at for the B&B - with enough rooms to provide a decent income in a desirable location - are around £350 - £500, 000.

Originally we were thinking about selling the London property but are now hoping to hold onto it and rent it out. It seems we can get a buy-to-let mortgage for £285 000 and use this as investment in the B&B - but would a bank consider giving us another mortgage to cover the rest of the B&B's purchase price? Especially considering we would be leaving our current employment (joint income of £43,000) and essentially only having the speculative income of the B&B as income - and only £5K savings.

Are we _meta_phorically eating our own cake by wanting to hold onto the London property?

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Simon