Putting property on the market for rent - help please

Adz1000

Hi guys, I currently live with my girlfriend in a flat and I own a flat with a mortgage which is empty as I live here now. The plan was to sell it on and move into a house together but obviously with the things as they are it hasn't sold in almost a year, so I was thinking of renting it out and using the rent to pay off the mortgage and save up for a deposit together.

I have a few queries though, first of all is, I am fixed on my mortgage until October 2010 and as I will be using the property for generating rent, I will need to change my mortgage as obviously it is just a personal mortgage at the moment. Will I have to pay an early repayment charge if I wanted to do this as I know I have to if I wanted to get out of the fixed rate? I really don't want to be paying about £1400 which I was quoted when I was asking about cancelling the fixed rate a while ago.

Also, I assume I have to pay the ground rent for the property which is obviously all the general maintenance of the building which I am fine with but am I supposed to pay for the council tax or would that be the liability of the tenant? All the other bills (water/gas/elec etc) will be the priority of the tenant.

Any help or advice on the matter at all would be great and hopefully I'm in the right section, if not please move to wherever it needs to go!

Thanks in advance!

latecomer

Some lenders will allow you to rent out the property without changing the mortgage but you need to get consent from them to let it out. I would speak to a local letting agency to get more info on the whole letting process.

Adz1000

latecomer wrote: »

Some lenders will allow you to rent out the property without changing the mortgage but you need to get consent from them to let it out. I would speak to a local letting agency to get more info on the whole letting process.

Thanks mate, I will speak to my bank tomorrow then! Hopefully be able to do it as it will be a pain otherwise. If my bank says they won't do it, have I got any other option except for an early repayment charge?

claretslass

I know you're not supposed to but i did something similar when i first moved in with my other half. i had my mail redirected to my new address and just didn't tell the mortgage company i was letting the property, then after the fixed rate ended i re-mortgaged on a buy-to-let. i think this actually made things easier for the remortgage as i had a tenant so could show them a tenancy agreement, prove income etc and getting the loan was no problem. you would have to be able to more than cover the mortgage with the rent though so i suppose it depends how big the mortgage is/how much rent you can get.