Help! Advice for second mortgage when seperating

tom1

Hi hoping someone may be able to offer me some advice to my current situation. I’ve recently separated from my partner and need to buy them out of our joint mortgage but I’ve not got much savings.

I solely own House 1 with a £45k mortgage, which is where I lived until I bought House 2 with my ex-partner. I currently rent out House 1 to my brother and I wouldn't want to stop this; I did mean to change House 1 to a BTL mortgage at the time but never did (my fault) so House 1 is on a standard mortgage (I did get a letter from the mortgage company agreeing I could let the house for a year but this has now expired).

I bought House 2 a couple of years ago with my partner who I have now separated from. It's an amicable split and we've agreed that if I pay them 10k they will sign their half of the house over to me (I also put in the initial deposit when buying).

So I’d welcome some advice on the quickest and cheapest way to go about this when I don't have £10k freely available to me.

I think my options are below but grateful if anyone could offer additional views.

Options
1) Ask the lender to take my ex-partner off the mortgage without re-mortgaging (would the mortgage company allow this?), then getting a loan/money transfer for £5k – which added to my £5k savings would be enough to pay my ex.

2) Re-mortgage House 2 in just my name for £100k (£90k for previous mortgage + £10k for my ex). I would initially need to re-mortgage House 1 in order to get an agreement to rent letter that would be required to get a mortgage on House 2.
Disadvantages of this are the time it would take to undergo two re-mortgages, any fees, potential increase in mortgage rates (I’m currently on good rates), and the double large hit to my credit rating(?).

Any advice would be gratefully received and I am going to see my IFA in a week or so when they get back from holiday but would like to have the options in my mind so I can start planning. Many thanks.