Can I let out my right to buy council house.

claireablast999

I really don't like where I am living right now and we are working hard to save for a deposit for a mortgage. If we were to buy our council house we would most likely get a £38000 discount and it would be really silly of us to take take up such a great offer. The problem is we don't like where we live and would like to know if we can use the right to buy and then rent the property out.

paddedjohn

if you bought the house then i dont think its got anything to do with the council if you rent it out, but you would need a buy-to-let mortgage to do it.
if you sell within 5 yrs then you have to pay some of the discount back on a sliding scale.

BitterAndTwisted

If you don't like where you live what makes you think anyone else would want to pay enough rent for you to be able to cover the mortgage payments for it?

PasturesNew

One issue is: where will you find a lender who is OK with RTB -and- will give you consent to let?

tbs624

Welcome as a newbie poster

Apart from the potential mortgage sourcing difficulties, if you did manage to get one would you have sufficent funds to cover the cost of your own housing elsewhere plus cover the mortgage costs in times when you either didn't have a T, or when an occupying T had stopped paying the rent?

Have you done any research on what is involved in being a LL?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Yes, you can let out a house you have bought, it doesn't matter whether you bought it from the council or a private individual.

Yes, it would make a lot of sense to buy a house at a discount under right-to-buy, and once you've saved the deposit it makes perfect sense to do so and then live in it for another couple of years to save another deposit for your more permanent home elsewhere.

And you don't need a BTL mortgage if you plan to live in it for a year or two, just find a mortgage lender that is known to offer a "consent to let" to a normal mortgage at a reasonable price. Far cheaper, and lower deposit, to do it that way than with a BTL mortgage from day one, and you'll realistically need to live there for anoher couple of years to save the second deposit anyway.

Just ensure you take out a longer term mortgage deal, and don't end up needing to remortgage soon at the time you'll have tenants in there, as you'd then need to switch to a BTL mortgage.

grey_lady

A friend of mine did the right to buy a couple of years ago and has recently rented out the property, he had no problems with getting consent to let with Abbey/Santander, or with finding a tenant.

Btw pretty sure you can use the discount as a deposit on the residential mortgage and just add anything you can to it.

ajk_2

I may be wrong but i thought it had to be your principle home within the discount repayment period which may be 2 or 5, years depending on when your tenancy started. HTH

geoffky

A lot of housing trusts who run council property have declared themselves as charities and if that is the case where you live then you can not buy your place under the right to buy as many people are now finding out..

leveller2911

geoffky wrote: »

A lot of housing trusts who run council property have declared themselves as charities and if that is the case where you live then you can not buy your place under the right to buy as many people are now finding out..

I stand to be corrected but Social housing built between 1989-1997 do not have the "right to buy" like Council tenants because of Government Policy at the time.
However Social housing built after 1997 the Housing Trusts/Housing Assosiations tenants have the "Right to aquire"(depending on tenancy) so even if the Trust declare themselves as Charities after the Tenancy agreement was signed the "Right to aquire " will remain.It would take an Act of Parliament" to change.

claireablast999

tbs624 wrote: »

Welcome as a newbie poster

Apart from the potential mortgage sourcing difficulties, if you did manage to get one would you have sufficent funds to cover the cost of your own housing elsewhere plus cover the mortgage costs in times when you either didn't have a T, or when an occupying T had stopped paying the rent?

Have you done any research on what is involved in being a LL?

The mortgage on the RTB should only woke out to around £500 pm so with two of us working i see no reason why we cant pay the mortgage on the RTB and on another small house or flat. we will make sure we can cover the cost of every thing from what we earn, if we cant then we wont take the risk.