Approaching Halifax about consent to let

sarahevie

We purchased our current home in Nov 2007, as a young professional couple. Since then I've given birth and we have another coming soon. So we could do with somewhere bigger.

As the housing market around us is sluggish to say the least, we are considering renting it out.

I have experience as a landlord, as I still own the previous house I lived in. I just remortgaged it to a btl product with MX and three years on it's still going well.

However, my problem with the house we are in now is that there probably isn't the 25% equity in it to put on a standard btl product. Also the rental won't cover the repayment mortgage that we have on it, although it will cover the interest for btl.

It's also not as strong a rental property as my previous property, less demand, although still more demand than for sales in the area.

Also we're stuck tied in for another 2 1/2 years (as we signed a 5 year fixed rate interest deal). So not sure where we'd stand.

Just wondering if anyone else was in the same boat in the current climate and whether there were any tips in approaching Halifax, or any other ideas.

MPlant

Hello

Sorry that this may be too late of a response.... I was looking for consent to lease form the Halifax last month too. It was approved a couple of weeks ago.

The only way to be able to get the consent with less than 25% equity is to demonstrate that you need to move 'out of necessity' and that you plan to move back to or sell the property.

I've posted about my situation in another thread: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/32609667#Comment_32609667

Good luck!

Global12

Hi

Thanks for your comments. When I made a general enquiry call to Halifax, they said if consent to let is granted, the mortgage gets converted over to buy-to-let (which current interest rates are twice my current rate), and I'd get charged the usual fee for that product (which can run into many hunderds of pounds). Did Halifax make you change over to a buy-to-let product and charge you a new set of product fees for doing so? Thanks

dopester

So each time you want to move on to a new / bigger / more suitable house - you want to take the 'let-out-the-existing-one' approach, whilst buying another.

Super-dooper. Can't see any possible problems or terrible risk with people leveraging their positions to the bone.

How about selling your first property, for the equity you'd need for a new house? And maybe the house you've got a mortgage on now.