Consent to Lease from Halifax!

craybould

Hi,

My wife and I are planning to go travelling for a couple of years, starting in the New Year and as such do not want to crystallise our negative equity and therefore wish to rent out our property.

Current mortgage payments are £560pcm, and recommended rental is £600pcm. After fees and insurance, it will leave a small shortfall, but we have sufficient savings to be able to top this up for at least a few years.

However, I am concerned that by asking Halifax what our options are in this regard, they will effectively force us onto a higher rate giving us a large shortfall on the mortgage repayments each month.

I'd like to do everything legally, and have heard that if we were to fix a rate now (curently 4.49% available, so only a small increase), then Halifax would allow us to remain on this deal with a consent to lease until the fixed rate expires. Is this still the case??

I would like to call them to assess our options, but worry that as soon as I mention this, a 'marker' would be placed on our account to prevent us switching to a new deal.

Any advice/previous experience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Dave_Ham

This has been the case with Halifax historically, although would not want to confirm that as a fact...