tommytucker1975

Well our ITA has been handed over to an immigration officer now and apart from having to send a copy of Lisa's NMC application for registration and copy of her degree, we are all done. Lisa is now the principal applicant because she has the job offer which makes me feel like a pleb.

Whats peoples thoughts on selling or renting homes in the UK. We have ours up for sale but the market is quiet at mo as you will all know. We thought about renting it out but we need all the cash we can get so as to get started in Welly. Lisa will be earning about $40000 pa as a midwife and me ... dont have anything at the minute hence the money being quite important.
If anyone has sold up were you prepared to take a big cut on the asking price just to ensure it sold?
Thoughts please...

Everton 7 Sunderland 1 ... oh dear

dreamfish

i couldnt afford to rent ours out. Our repayments were £1100 a month - and rental around here would only fetch £650 tops. We didnt want the burden.

We are very close to exchanging (hopefully tomorrow) but we were very willing to sell to a cash buyer and halve our potential profit from 30 to 15k.

We are perhaps fortunate in that we have some savings set aside, but like you say, any money from sale of the house is much needed!

Some say if you rent then you have that security of a bolthole
I think if you cut all ties you will be more motivated to make a go of things.
Not sure what the tax implications are of having an income from abroad.

Its a tough one - perhaps hold out for a buyer. Took us about 7 months from putting on the market to where we are now.

newkiwi

It depends on what you could get for renting out your UK home.
Its a trade-off between keeping a foot on the UK prop ladder until you are sure you are unlikely to return to the UK, not feeling "trapped" in NZ if you sell up your UK home, against the cash flow issues.

With only one salary at about 40k you will need to bring some savings across to help you set up, and manage until presumably you get a job, which may take a week or may take three months...

In any event, you will be best to rent in NZ for about 6 months to get a feel for different areas.

I would say be careful to take a cut in the asking price if you can afford to rent it out at a level where the rent covers the mortgage, but then you will need to be very careful on budgeting in NZ, because 40k will not go far as a household income...


You have to ask yourself what happens if you both want to return to the UK in a few years' tim

tommytucker1975

Thanks for the comments any advice is appeciated.

Hopefully we are going to be in NZ for more than a couple of years. Also in the situation that we only have a £50000 mortgage and house is up for £115000, by the time loans and stuff are paid off we'll have approx £30 -35000 to play with in NZ. Thought about remortgaging up to full value of house, taking the extra with us and renting out but then we've got to find tenants to make sure the mortgage is paid. Anyone else been in a similar predicament?

brandn

Yep.
We leave on Sunday and are renting ours out. There are a few ways around paying tax on the rent it does give you a way out if it doesnt work out which with all the best will in the world it may not. Also our mortgage isnt huge so to have a few pounds coming in will be very useful.
The only thing i would say is that you need to make sure you can cover the mortgage for a couple of months in case of a worst case scenario and you were caught without tenants for a while.
Just depends what your situation is.

dreamfish

thats another reason why we didnt want to rent out. The guy next door rents his out - it was empty for 4 months last year. Thats a lot of rent to lose
I think only people with a very small mortgage in a comfortable financial situation can consider this renting out option.
If we were one of those people, I dont think I would hesitate. i would rent out.

Justcol

hello tommytucker, we're in exactly the same situation as you and it is a pain.
we've got around 150k profit tied up in our place and we're gonna need to get settled once everythings cleared.
We've had it on the market for a week and had our first viewers today but i'm not holding my breath for them to get back in touch.
One thing i keep reminding myself is that we get a year before we have to travel to nz so we can wait to sell then move if need be.

I know what you meen about feeeling like a pleb, my wife is principal applicant and i end up feeling pretty useless really. Still it was the other way round when we went to aus 15 years ago so i suppose its payback time.

anyway good luck with all your plans whatever you decide to do
col

hazeandsteve

We looked at mortgaging with rent as an income to cover costs, and the building society were a deff no no.
Glad we sold now. We own our house here, and on our current low wages, am glad we don't get UK stresses regarding money.
If you have problems with the property or tenant, you'll find it one hell of a headache trying to sort things from here.
Bon chance.

sol133

I'm waiting to sell my UK place too - let's hope it goes soon. Someone asked me if you could buy a place in NZ with a UK mortgage to take advantage of the hugely lower interest rates. Any ideas? Would you have to have a UK income to service the payments? Could it be that easy....?

PaulGent

Hi Tommy
Not sure how good this advice is but it worked for us.
We found a really good interior designer to "dress" the inside of our house when we wanted to sell it. Prior to that we had the house on the market for 18 months without a single genuine offer.
Once the designer had finished his work the house sold for the asking price within 3 days of it going back on the market to a cash buyer!
The designer and the things we had to buy to meet up with his recommendations cost us around £3,000 on a £550,000 property so the investment in his services worked out a real bargain.
I'm not sure if it was all a fluke ....but it worked for us.

Paul