Residential mortgage - posted overseas

JayZed

We are in the process of buying a new flat in London. We have an existing mortgage on our current flat (which we are selling) with Nationwide and have a mortgage offer (a standard residential mortgage) for the new flat - LTV of about 63%. We're quite close to completing the purchase.

My company has just informed me that I have the option to be posted overseas for a year or two. If we do go overseas (which is almost certain), we will want to let our new flat out while we're abroad.

The problem is that I don't know whether Nationwide will let us do that on our residential mortgage, especially as we will have only just purchased the flat and taken on the mortgage. I have tried asking Nationwide, and they've rather unhelpfully said that they can't tell us whether they'll give us consent to let until we've actually taken out the mortgage.

Any advice or thoughts? I realise that we could let it out without telling Nationwide, but I'm worried about the insurance implications - and besides, as we're abroad we'll probably need to use a letting agent, and I understand that they normally want to confirm that the mortgagee has given consent to let.