Moving cities. Sell or let?

crondom

My partner and I bought a one bedroom flat in SE London for £315k in Jul 2017. Our fixed term mortgage is up in May 2019.

We want to move to Bristol this year. My partner is applying for a job and if she's successful I will transfer my job, meaning we'd move approx Jun 2019.

Selling is a risk as the value has not gone up since buying, and because we're so close to remortgage presumably we will either have to stay on current mortgage and accept SVR from May whilst trying to sell, or remortgage then immediately try to sell.

Letting is an option, whilst we rent in Bristol, which would involve obtaing consent to let, but don't know if we can do that so close to a remortgage? I know a lot of people simply don't tell the bank but I'd prefer to do everything above board. The obvious potential disadvantage to this if there is a crash then we won't be able to sell and stuck letting and then having to convert to a BTL mortgage.

Frankly I'm stressing out about how this could work, and the uncertainty of Brexit makes everything impossible to predict..

Any opinions or advice appreciated!

quantumlobster

Go and read the stickies about being a landlord, and see if you still fancy it after that. Personally speaking, I think that for a single property, it's a lot of faff and risk for not much reward. Think of it as a business commitment for at least a year, with risks like having no tenant (so the exposure is 12x mortgage payments), and having a tenant but the roof falls in, or the boiler needs replacing (other costly domestic emergencies are available), or having a tenant who makes a mess of the place, etc...

Depending on your LTV, you may not even be eligible for a BTL mortgage - and even then you may have to change lender to get one.

Sometimes circumstances mean that all you can do is take the least terrible of the options on offer - in this case, that looks to me like selling up. Not everything in life can be made cost-neutral, unfortunately

ciderboy2009

+1for not renting it out.

I would forget about remortgaging whichever way you go - you'll either face early redemption charges when you do sell or run the risk of being unable to get consent to let.

If you do decide to rent it out then you would be better off moving to a buy to let mortgage rather than hoping on consent to let. You would need a fair amount of equity in your property to get this though.

Bear in mind that house prices in Bristol are still rising and properties are still selling fairly quickly (if you ignore the Christmas lull).

Decent rentals here are not cheap and tend to be snapped up quickly so buying a Bristol property may be your best option.

sal_III

It all depends on what are the chances of you returning to London in a couple of years. Are you confident you will like your new jobs and living in Bristol? If the chances are high, try to rent out your London property, otherwise don't bother. The risk and stress are just not worth it.

If you decide to sell, just go to SVR for couple of months, it's not going to break the bank and might end up cheaper than remortgaging to a deal with no ER penalties.

Cakeguts

Will you be able to afford the mortgage on the London flat as well as the rent on the Bristol property if your tenant stops paying the rent?

crondom

Thanks for replies.

We would not be returning to London, this is intended to be a permanent move to be closer to friends and family (I'm from Bristol originally).

Although we would both be going onto lower salaries, we would JUST about be able to survive paying rent in Bristol and mortgage in London, if we either stayed on SVR or got tenants who then left.

Am I right in thinking that getting consent to let immediately after a remortgage is not possible?

lincroft1710

crondom wrote: »

Selling is a risk as the value has not gone up since buying, and because we're so close to remortgage presumably we will either have to stay on current mortgage and accept SVR from May whilst trying to sell, or remortgage then immediately try to sell.

There is never any guarantee that a property's value will rise over a short period of time. Just sell it and buy in Bristol.

AnotherJoe

crondom wrote: »

Selling is a risk as the value has not gone up since buying, and because we're so close to remortgage presumably we will either have to stay on current mortgage and accept SVR from May whilst trying to sell, or remortgage then immediately try to sell.

As opposed to letting it out not being a risk??? As opposed to letting it out not being an ongoing open ended risk?

Sell it.