Ok well this is rather a long story;

We moved into our house in Oct 05 with a Northern Rock Together Mortgage at 120% (95% LTV) we could afford the payments fine based on both our incomes. Last December my husband got made redundant, so we agreed with Northern Rock we would pay interest only for 6 months, he worked three part time jobs while looking for something full time, spoke with Northern Rock in July and arranged to stay on interest only till Dec 09 as we were still struggling. In October he got a full time job and I got a pay rise. We thought everything was fine and thought great by December can be back straight again and start overpaying mortgage to make up for shortfall.

Beginning of December my Husbands new boss died and on New Years Eve my husband was made redundant so spoke to Northern Rock about staying interest only for a few more months.

In the meantime husband applied for and has been offered a job on a farm as a labourer, but a requirement of the job is that he and I live on the farm in a house which is provided for us.

So contacted Northern Rock again and asked about consent to let, they made it seem it was just a case of filling out a form and it would all be fine, then I read on various forums that we would need 75% LTV to be accepted.

I spoke to Northern Rock again today and they have said it is usually 75% LTV but if the critera aren't met then it will be referred to the underwriters and they will make a decision.

I have bad credit due to credit cards in my name which we used and were late paying due to unemployment, changes from monthly, to 4 weekly to weekly pay.

my husband has a medium credit rating as he only has one credit card, a loan and our joint mortgage.

If we can't move then my husband can't take the job and we won't be able to afford the mortgage, we can't afford to pay a large sum off the mortgage to bring it to 75% (approx £25k) however, with the wage he will be on at we can more than afford our mortgage without renting the house out, but I don't think we can leave it unoccupied under the mortgage terms, plus I wouldn't like to leave it unoccupied.

So I am awaiting the forms arriving and hoping can anyone on here give me any advice about how we can improve our chances of getting accepted, or possible alternatives?

Thanks!

Hi, I think you have been exptremely honest and up front with your lender. I think most people would have just gone ahead and rented their property out on the basis that 'as long as the lender get their repayments on time', where's the fire?

As you have already given a 'heads-up' to your lender and are awaiting forms the only thing I can suggest to you (as an idea), is to contact the local authority to see whether they would be interested in renting your property from you? This is a little known/used avenue but please bear with me. Most local authorities rent private properties, usually at about 10% less than the going market rental values. However, there are NO agents charges and you are GUARANTEED your rent, even between tennents when the property is empty! I believe this is a much better way of renting out private property.IF your local authority rent your home they will sign a 1/2/3 year contract on a fully repairing lease basis. Unfortunately, if the new farm job doesn't last, you wont be able to move back into your house until the end of the lease agreement.

As the rent is guaranteed and with a formal offer to rent letter from the council your lender would find it hard to turn you down. They will most probably charge you a slightly higher interest rate (for what they will say are for administration purposes), but they would do that if you were to rent the house out anyway.

The very best of luck.

Sarah

I wondered if you made any progress with NR? We are in a similar situation and I sent our application off yesterday.

Simon

Hi Simon,

When I received the forms from NR, I called the number that comes with the forms and spoke to a lady there and explained, she said that basically the circumstances would be looked at by the underwriters and to write a letter to go with the application giving as much detail as possible about the situation, background to our mortgage payment history and explaining what we planned to do etc.

So wrote the letter and sent that off within 5 days I got a decision and they'd agreed to Consent to Let for 12 months with £100 fee which we can pay straight away or add onto mortgage, just needed to sign a consent form and send it off.

When I spoke to them and got the decision I asked about what would happen if we wanted it for a longer term (which we do) and they said it would be reviewed at the end of the 12 months and a decision would be made then. Which is fair enough as we don't meet the critera they've set out (though a part of me thinks it's a ploy to get £100 per year out of us). They did say if everything was paid on time and in full and there were no problems then continuing the consent to let shouldn't be a problem.

Hope this helps and Good luck with your application

Sarah

Sarah

That's brilliant - well done. Quite a relief I'm sure.

I did exactly as you said, wrote a covering letter with attached proof of earnings etc.

Thanks for your quick reponse - will sleep better tonight!

Simon

It's good to see other people are in the same predicament!

My boyfriend moved in with me last November and his house was empty for a while, his mortgage is with Halifax. We obviously wanted to rent it out as it's just dead money paying the mortgage. We have now rented it with a contract and landlord certificates, but we are unsure as to where we stand legally?!

We told the mortgage lender that he is now living with me so that any correspondence would be sent to the house we now share and they confirmed in writing that his statements, etc would be sent to the new address. However, we have now recieved a letter asking us to confirm if the house is empty or if we are renting it out.

We have a few questions:

Do we tell them the truth?

Do we tell them that we had no idea that we had to inform them?

When does the consent to let kick in?

How do we get a consent to let?

Will we have to go for a buy to let?

Our problem with a buy to let is that my boyfriends mortgage is £90,000ish and the house is only worth £105,000 (before current economic situations the house was worth £139,995 which is why we want to rent it out and wait for the market to rise).

Please, any advise is more than welcome!!!!!!!

M&L

There are lots of people in this situation, as there have been many posts to this and other forums.

See thread and links contained.

http://www.moneysupermarket.com/community/forums/t/am-i-legally-required-to-get-a-buytolet-mortgage-36468.aspx

Your boyfriend could phone the Halifax with a tentative enquiry about letting to see what the score is. He could just say he had moved in for awhile with you as a trial and was considering his future options.

Techncially he is in breach of mortgage contract and the Halifax could take action if they wanted to. I am not quite sure what they would do. They could backdate charges relevant to allowing letting of the property.

Huckster