Hello all,


So for a bit of context I've detailed my situation below but my main question is, does anyone have any experience of gaining consent to let from Nationwide and is there anything I should be aware of when applying for it?


Context
Myself and my OH have been working towards the following goals for the past 3-4 years now:


1. Buy a flat
2. Save enough money for a healthy deposit
3. Get married
4. Go travelling for a year
5. Come back and move up north
6. Start a family


So 3 years ago, we bought a flat in an area of London where Crossrail is going to open up at the end of 2018 using the Help to Buy equity loan scheme. We're just going through the process of paying off our equity loan so we will end up with about 70% LTV with Nationwide on a 2 year tracker. So that's 1 and 2 sorted.


We've got our wedding booked in for next June at which point we will give up our jobs and go travelling for anything up to a year. When we come back, we want to find jobs up north to be closer to family and settle down.


Our big dilemma is what to do with our flat in London. Ideally we want to keep the flat for as long as possible, and rent up north or buy a very cheap place as we want to realise as much of the uplift in price due to the improvements in transport links. We really don't want to have to sell before Crossrail.


My main assumption all along has been that Nationwide will grant us consent to let for the time we're travelling and when we're back we can convert to a buy-to-let or do a let-to-buy but I'm getting nervous about this now as I'm not sure how they will take the idea of us quitting our jobs and going travelling.


I spoke to a mortgage broker at the beginning of the year about the viability of switching to a buy-to-let mortgage when we leave but I got very negative feedback along the lines of "you can't switch to a buy-to-let from residential without 6 months of renting it out already".


Any help/tips/advice (positive or negative - I'm all ears!), would be greatly appreciated.