Consent to lease (Halifax)

MalikTarik

Hi Peeps,
This is my first time out!

I need a bit of advice... I have moved to a new property and the one which I'm leaving from needs to be let out. Halifax, my mortgage lender have said I need to fill in a consent to lease form. Which they say they can refuse (the consent).

On what grounds can it be refused? They have said, the rental reason has to be a need as opposed to a want

??????HELP!!!!

dougk_2

They have the right to allow you to rent the property out or not. What they are requiring you to do is ask for their permission to do so.

They will weigh up the risks to them (i.e. are you likely to get the rent enough to cover the mortgage and other costs, is the property likely to be rentable etc). Your orginal mortgage was for you to occupy the property not for a "business use".

Be prepared they may well allow you to do so but charge you a higher interest rate. You may want to look to remortgage with another company on a BTL mortgage.

MarkyMarkD

They are saying that they aren't letting people with ordinary residential mortgage do "buy to let".

You don't "need" to let out your existing property, unless you can't sell it for some reason. Presumably you actually "want" to let it out, as an investment - in which case they are quite likely to refuse consent.

You probably ought to remortgage it to a buy-to-let mortgage, but obviously it's cheaper to leave it on a residential mortgage if Halifax will let you.

By the way, this would be better in a new thread as it has nothing to do with Alliance & Leicester.

simonjfisher

In practice they will not refuse a request unless they believe you have deliberately engineered the situation to avoid getting a buy to let mortgage in the first place.

fast_track

When the remortgage was going through I had a number of queries. However after a bit of detective work I found a nice lady at the Abbey National who was happy to explain the justification for outrageous fees, eg £99 redemption fee was because someone had to open a filing cabinet somewhere in Northampton. I asked & expected the A&L to be able to give me a similar breakdown and explain to me what I had paid for and why their hourly rate for doing a job is about 200 x that of what an employee gets paid. I would have lived with that. What made me so angry is the fact that I was given the run around by people who had no intention of answering my questions - which I believe I have every right to make. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to discuss this, I find it very theraputic, regards

Jane