Extending Consent to Let

Errors78

Looking for some advice regarding my studio flat which I currently let out. The flat was bought in 2006 for £86,000 and I took out a mortgage for £80,000. For the past three years I have let out this property with a consent to let granted by Santander.
The fixed rate of 5.72% ends in June and with it so will the consent to let. I am not in a position to move back into the property as I have since got married and have a young child, so am looking for advice on how to continue renting the property.
My neighbours flat, which is the same as mine has just sold for £63,500 – considerably less than I paid. However we have been anticipating this to be the case and have been over paying the mortgage so that it currently stands at £59,500.
Ideally we would like to extend the consent to let and go onto SVR. However we are aware that this may not be possible so have saved an additional £12,000 which we can put towards the mortgage once the fixed rate ends. In addition the current monthly payments are £510, whilst the monthly rental income is £375.
The question is can we:
a) Do nothing and go onto standard variable rate
b) Request to extend consent to let – is this likely to be granted
c) Remortgage to Buy to Let
Ideally we want to save enough to buy our own house as we are currently in rented, so if we could maintain our savings for our own deposit that would be the best outcome for us.
Many Thanks

Thrugelmir

Have you been declaring the rental income from the property to the HMRC?

Though appears not to be a profitable venture.

So maybe cut your losses and sell.

silvercar

If the lender refused to extend consent to let, but the tenancy was put into place when you had CTL what happens? Under tenancy law you can't just immediately evict a tenant because CTL is refused and the tenancy predating the CTL withdrawal would probably mean that the tenant retains some rights and couldn't be evicted for this reason alone.

Errors78

Hi Thanks for your comments. Yes the accounts are declared to HMRC. We don't want to sell as have already sold my husbands flat which was also bought at the peak and had to take a big hit on that. 60K on two properties is a lot to lose in 2 years!! Am thinking that we will need to go to BTL if looking at this as a long term investment. The existing term on the mortgage is 14 years so if we extend this to 25, am thinking we should be able to get 125% rent to mortgage ratio.