Advice on selling property or let to buy

kenzie123

Hello
We have a 2 bed mid terrace in Greater London and are looking to get a larger house for our family.

We have a few options and wanted advice on what would be best given our current mortgage / savings and circumstances.

Our home has another 18 months left on a 1.45% mortgage. We have 20 years left on our current term.

Our options are:

Sell property and buy larger house, accruing a larger mortgage debt and longer mortgage term
This feels like the most usual step when looking for a larger family home, however put off by the idea of having a larger mortgage.

Extend our current property
Thinking a loft and ground floor extension will give us much needed space but possibly not enough |(it's already a small house) and also aware of the disruption of a build, plus costs of approx. £100k.

Let to buy on our current property
We know least about this option but feel it could be profitable given the house is a great option for a rental and close to the central line but we are not experts in the field and concerned we may be under more financial strain if we went ahead. 
We've called our lender about this twice and got contradictory advice both times. 
while we know this is risky, we like the idea of keeping an asset for our future. 

If anyone has any thoughts or has been in a similar situation would be great to hear - 

- which option would be most financially savvy?
- with 2 children and full time jobs what would be the least taxing on our time / and savings?

thanks in advance.

amanda1024

Could you look to buy a larger house in a cheaper location - minimising the impact of option 1? I’d say the first option is least taxing on time, at least on an ongoing basis (obviously the one-off disruption of moving). Financially, it all depends - you’d need to compare likely house prices for the sort of place you’d want to buy v your current place v likely rental yields. Tax etc situation means letting can be high effort low reward - and presumably would mean taking on an even higher level of debt?

housebuyer143

Where would you live if you let to buy it? You would be taking a huge mortgage on your new place and the additional 3% stamp duty.