BTL mortgage-dss tenant

LoveMyLife

Can someone tell me whether it makes any difference to which mortgage companies I approach to re-finance my btl properties if the previous tenant was a dss claimant.
My point was that if there are few lenders who will accept dss and I lock myself into such a deal, supposing I then let to non-claiming tenants in the near future, have I limited myself interest wise when I really didnt need to.
Also, as one property is empty can I not go for any suitable btl mortgage.
I've been advised to go ahead with a fairly long term fixed rate btl which I have questioned but am not entirely reassured with the answer.
A large fee (in my opinion) is involved here and although not much up-front costs needed, I still feel unsure.
I don't like turning elsewhere for more advice but any help or opinions will be appreciated.

JoeK_3

mtm wrote: »

Can someone tell me whether it makes any difference to which mortgage companies I approach to re-finance my btl properties if the previous tenant was a dss claimant.
My point was that if there are few lenders who will accept dss and I lock myself into such a deal, supposing I then let to non-claiming tenants in the near future, have I limited myself interest wise when I really didnt need to.
Also, as one property is empty can I not go for any suitable btl mortgage.
I've been advised to go ahead with a fairly long term fixed rate btl which I have questioned but am not entirely reassured with the answer.
A large fee (in my opinion) is involved here and although not much up-front costs needed, I still feel unsure.
I don't like turning elsewhere for more advice but any help or opinions will be appreciated.

There are a number of different question here:

1) Buy to let mortgages being commercial deals requires the services of a whole of market mortgage adviser to find the best deal to suit your circumstances.

2) Previous tenants are irrelevant if you are going to remortgage but you will need a short-term tenancy agreement.

3) If you are renting to dss people, ask the mortgage adviser to take this into consideration.

4) There are a lot of deals out there at the moment that require as much as 1.5% arrangement fee paid to the lender and if this is prohibitive then you should choose a product with a lower arrangement fee or non at all.

JoeK

LoveMyLife

Thank you JoeK for your reply
1. Advisor is whole of market (on another forum) who I e-mailed privately.
2. Have AST with current rented property which I'm also trying to re-finance.
3. As untenanted property may not necessarily be rented to dss tenant, I wouldn't know how to proceed with this.
4. Deal is 2.5% arrangement fee, so judging by your reply maybe I will continue researching deals.

Again, thank you, and any further ideas will be appreciated.

JoeK_3

mtm wrote: »

3. As untenanted property may not necessarily be rented to dss tenant, I wouldn't know how to proceed with this.

No problem here, just get it valued and assessed for rental income by the lender. You should be able to raise up to 85% loan to value or the monthly rental income should be around 25% higher than the mortgage payment.

JoeK

LoveMyLife

So, presumably, when currently tenanted property becomes vacant soon, I will be able to do the same thing here. I do not necessarily have the intention of renting to a person claiming a benefit.
Of course I realise that if the conditions of the mortgage stipulate no housing benefit I would have to abide by this.

silvercar

This always confuses me. A lot of tenants claim housing benefit themselves, how is a landlord expected to know?

If a have a mortgage from a lender who doesn't allow benefit claimants, what happens if the tenants circumstances change and he/ she subsequently claims? You can't evict as they have a year's AST!

My tenant told me that she would be claiming initially but this just cropped up in conversation. I had no communication from the council, she only needed to show them an AST. I have no idea if she is still claiming but I suspect not. When I remortgage next year, I will genuinely not know if she is a claimant or not and would consider it intrusive to ask.

JoeK_3

mtm wrote: »

So, presumably, when currently tenanted property becomes vacant soon, I will be able to do the same thing here. I do not necessarily have the intention of renting to a person claiming a benefit.
Of course I realise that if the conditions of the mortgage stipulate no housing benefit I would have to abide by this.

A quick answer to this is, yes!

JoeK

PROFESSIONAL_LANDLORD

silvercar wrote: »

This always confuses me. A lot of tenants claim housing benefit themselves, how is a landlord expected to know?

If a have a mortgage from a lender who doesn't allow benefit claimants, what happens if the tenants circumstances change and he/ she subsequently claims? You can't evict as they have a year's AST!
My tenant told me that she would be claiming initially but this just cropped up in conversation. I had no communication from the council, she only needed to show them an AST. I have no idea if she is still claiming but I suspect not. When I remortgage next year, I will genuinely not know if she is a claimant or not and would consider it intrusive to ask.

ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.

PROFESSIONAL_LANDLORD

mtm wrote: »

Can someone tell me whether it makes any difference to which mortgage companies I approach to re-finance my btl properties if the previous tenant was a dss claimant.
My point was that if there are few lenders who will accept dss and I lock myself into such a deal, supposing I then let to non-claiming tenants in the near future, have I limited myself interest wise when I really didnt need to.
Also, as one property is empty can I not go for any suitable btl mortgage.
I've been advised to go ahead with a fairly long term fixed rate btl which I have questioned but am not entirely reassured with the answer.
A large fee (in my opinion) is involved here and although not much up-front costs needed, I still feel unsure.
I don't like turning elsewhere for more advice but any help or opinions will be appreciated.

The statement ' NO DSS tenants' from lenders, is a " nudge nudge, wink wink " remark for the benefit of large share holders controlled by rich bankers, who fleece the BTL market with their greedy arrangement fees, who could not possibly live with themselves, thinking the BTL brigade were making money off the backs of what would be, homeless people.


SO ! NO PROBLEM.........;)

LoveMyLife

Thank you so much for the replies. Pity the person giving me mortgage advice couldn't have explained that !!