Remortgage (living abroad)

CC801340

We're currently living abroad and have a UK property mortgaged with Santander.

Outstanding mortgage: 147,000
Value of property: 225,000
Current rate: 4.99%
No tie in.

It's currently rented out for 750 (only seeing 650 after agent fees) with monthly repayments of approx 1100.

I'd like to try and reduce the gap between the rent and the mortgage and obviously pay a lower rate of interest.

I'm assuming that if we were to re-mortgage it would have to be buy to let. Would we get much better than our current deal?

We're able to pay of at least 20k lump sum every 4 months if that would help.

Are we best to just sell the property? We don't really have any plans to live in it if / when we return...we've just kept it to keep our foot on the ladder.

Any advice welcome.

Wh05apk

Abbey's SVR is 4.24%, which I assume you are on?

You wil be unlikely to beat this on a BTL basis, presumably your current mortgage is repayment? hence why your rent is not covering the mortgage.

Personally I would hold the property long term to get some growth (depending where it is?) if you can afford the shortfall, it will effectively become a very good pension plan for you in the long term.

CC801340

We're with Santander on a 4.99% SVR. I must admit I thought this was high but perhaps not for BTL.

Yes - full repayment - (sorry should have added this the first time). We don't overpay but I guess we really should, although we do pay of large chunks every few months.

Property is in an excellent location just of the M1 in Nottingham.

We're both early 30's so a long way off retirement - currently living in Oz where we may stay for good.

The rate is currently terrible to bring cash across to Oz so I guess we're just best to pay off as much as we can of our mortgage to reduce what we pay in interest over the life of the mortgage. Leaves us a nice sum in the UK if we do move back or time for the rate to increase so we can sell in the future and move the money across to here......

Only problem with sending so much back to the UK to pay off the mortgage is that we're not actually saving anything here in preparation to buy one of the ridiculously expensive houses here!

jen_br

Depends where you are as well - Can you afford if you decide to sell your tenants leaving? I know a landlord in a similar boat and her property has been sitting to sell for over 6 months and tenants don't like to feel they are going to be kicked out anytime.

Its a tough time to sell and the market isn't great, could you up the rent at all?

Buy to let would be a better deal from what I have read.

Leew1231

Snap. Early 30's, living in Oz, not sure when will be coming back if at all, and want to buy a house here.

I am renting out my UK house, rent not covering mortgage, now mortgage gone up. So on fixed rate at 5.78%, now up to 7.28%. Gutted at this rise.

Thinking of selling but don't really want to, but financially it is daft not to I realise that. But, one of the reasons we are here is because my wife lost her job due to illness so struggled financially. We had no savings left as we had bust a gut to get this house so had nothing to fall back on. So we are here, sending money home to pay mortgage and debts accrued when struggling. We do plan to go home eventually, I am worried if we do sell, our credit rating would stop us being able to get another mortgage at a later date.