Hi everyone, we have got to the stage when we are thinking about renting out our house with it not selling.
I understand you are supposed to inform your mortgage lender that you wish to do this. Is this more of a formality or do they often say no? Why should they say no, does it happen very often? How would you find out without telling them that that is your intention? Can you actually rent it out without informing them?
Thanks very much

We were with Nationwide and they said no. We didn't inform them, the solicitor did.

Alliance & Leicester have said yes to me on several occasions, each time charging me £125. If you have a mortgage, the bank has an interest in what happens in your/their property.

You COULD rent it out without informing them, and you CAN, but you MAY not Worst case scenario....bank finds out, you are in breech of mortgage terms, they call in the loan giving you seven days' notice to pay off your mortgage.

We are renting ours out now without their permission. Went for an appointment to ask for a consent to let and he said we would have to change our mortgage putting the interest rate up a fair bit. While I was talking to him, he sort of said that the mortgage company never knocks on doors so how would they find out. The only problem would be that if something major went wrong and they found out then there could be trouble. We have taken out quite a hefty landlords insurance policy and have an agent on full management so hopefully will be ok for a couple of years

We are renting ours out. We asked the building society and they said no problem and put us on a interest only mortgage which is great as its dropped by about £400 a month.
We told them we were moving to Australia for a few years.

Hi Nicky, can you tell me which landlords insurance company you have used to cover yourselves.

Thanks

Hi

We are renting our house out. Our mortgage is with Nationwide, i contacted them via letter, they sent me a form to fill in then said no problem. Our buildings insurance are also with Nationwide so i contacted that department just to inform them of the situation. I would recommend that you try to make sure you have a good letting agency as we had a crap one at first & our first lodger left the house in a right mess when they moved out. We got absolutly no back up or support from our agent. I had 4 pages of problems left by the lodger which we gave to the agents!!! We spent hours making everything right ( including a gas fire that they had tampered with & made dangerous!!!!! ) We now have an excellent agent who keep on top of everything. Hope everthing goes ok for you.

Hi, does your letting agent guarantee your monthly rental whilst it is rented out or do you have landlord insurance for this?

Thanks

Hi

Neither. We looked at some sort of landlords insurance but to be honest we decided it wasn't worth it we would just keep our fingers crossed & hope for the best With the first agent we had someone on 6mthly rental. 1st 6mths was fine but then he lost he job apparently & didn't pay up but the agents didn't bother to tell us until i phoned asking why we hadn't got paid that they informed me he was not paying. They hadn't even bothered to contact him by calling at the house to find out what was happening, just kept leaving messages on his phone which needless to say he ignored. This was 3 weeks after it was due!! Needless to say i blew my top & told them exactly what i thought of them ( very politely i hasten to add but they still put the phone down me ) We did eventually get all the rent owed & moved rapidly to another agent who are on the doorstep 2 days after failure to pay. Our new tenant has got a 2yr contract which they requested so it works better for us. Have had no problem with failure to pay up till now ( famous last words!!!!!! )

Have you found it easy to switch off from the UK property or is it always a worry at the back of your mind?

We are still in the uk. Its a long story but in short we moved onto our business as we are self employed. However i have explained to our agents that we will be moving to oz & apparently they have landlords all over the world ( was trying to contact someone in Dubai when we were in office on 1 occasion) i feel a lot happier with these as if there are any problems they sort it. for example the boiler went a couple of weeks ago, they contacted us asked could there engineer fix it, we agreed, boiler fixed within couple of days & payment taken out of the next months rent. no hassle for us & problem solved quickly for tenant. Our last agent was supposed to get someone to look at the fire but never did resulting in nearly having to have it condemned!!! The only worry i do have is who will clean the house when these tenants eventually leave ( if they do leave!!! ) ready for new ones but i'm sure the agents will be able to sort this out too.

We are renting ours out - leave for Oz on Sunday. We phoned the mortgage lender to 'enquire' about letting the property. They told us that our mortage would go up by £290 a month!!! Needless to say we never told them we eventually rented it out. Our agents are looking after everything and they have an insurance policy that pays out if our tenents don't. Fingers crossed it goes okay.

Kareena

We are with the Halifax and I have already enquired about renting out our house, there conditions were you can't rent while on a fixed rate deal. That was it.

So check if this is not restricting your lenders decision.

Which building society are you with, may I ask?

Alistair

Hi,

We too are with the Halifax and they said no problem about renting on our fixed rate

All we have to do is apply for a consent to let and the mortgage would then have to go on the standard variable, this can only be done for a maximum of 3years though. We are now at the end of our fixed rate and is due to be renewed at the end of the month before we fly out. We have rellies that will be renting off us till June 09 but the house will also be on the market so I don't know whether that changed the situation or not

On the mortgage note though, I did alter our mortgage over the phone at work today from a 20 year mortgage to a 35 year mortgage (only for the short term may I add , and this has dropped our payments by £130.00 a month so far, and this will be due to drop again at the end of the month when the fixed term is up. Again this is purely on personal circumstance though, I'm not saying it will work for everybody but it will definitely help us out whilst we try to sell as it will bring the payments down quite a wack, especially having rent and a mortgage to pay from Oz after June !!!

Donna.