Payment Holiday to cover year travelling...

jubilee1981

Hi, can someone please help me? My partner and I are planning a year travelling around South America. We'd like to rent our flat out but the rent won't cover the mortgage (currently with Nationwide). We've been told we don't have enough equity to go interest only (even though we're at 33% equity). So we're thinking about taking a payment holiday, under which we're not meant to rent the flat out. I was thinking about just renting the flat out on the sly to a friend and telling the mortgage company that the friend is just house sitting and not paying rent (which is apparently ok). What would happen if we were to get caught? Would we just get told off? Or would it be a more serious issue?

JoeK_3

Firstly, I would challenge the fact that you can't go interest only as the ability to change to interest only must be written into your mortgage deed.

To me it would be far more beneficial to you if you could convert to interest only and let the house out, rather than having a payment holiday, where no interest will be paid at all and this will be added to the capital outstanding.

You are an honest thing. The lender could do a thing if you had a friend house sitting, infact they would be happy with the knowledge of their asset was being looked after. lol ..

JoeK