I am afraid that Buy to Let is your only option. If your lender will not allow you to take out a "Consent to Lease" then you really have no option as it is illegal to place a residential mortgage on a property and then rent the property to tenants. The definition of a residential property is a proeprty that will be resided in by yourself and family whereby you occupy and use more than 40% of the property.

Unfortunately no toher lender would consider taking you on with the knowledge that you are going to be applying for a consent to lease and no lender will issue a consent to lease within 6 months of a mortgage start

There are 2 ways to look at this:

1. There are lenders out there that will offer 80% Buy to Let mrotgages and you may be forced down this route.

2. Your property may only achieve 80.01% loan to value assessment and you cannot any longer achieve a buy to let remortgage meaning that you have to stay with your lender. If this is then put to your lender that you are now going to be out of the country and away from the property for more than 90 days it will mean that your insurance on the property will no longer be valid (due to none occupancy) but that you wish to place people into your property in order to keep the insurance valid etc. Don't tell the lender you plan to "rent" and they may agree to this or turn a blind eye.....as long as this is only a temporary measure.

Hi all,

A few questions on our situation - all help/advice greatly appreciated.

We bought our house 3 years at 95% LTV on a 3 year fixed repayment deal which expires in a few months time. We were happy to buy at the high LTV as the property was a renovation/update project and so over the last few years we have been updating and modernising, such that I now expect (not pie in the sky, but realistically given 4 neighbour sells) to have ~80% LTV at minimum.

I have now been offered a temporary position overseas by my company and am looking at mortgage options. My current lender has stated that they do not do "consent to let" - the property will remain our only property we own and we simply want to let it temporarily whilst we are abroad.

Does anybody know of any lenders that allow consent to let (and even more difficulty) and if so do they allow for new customers?

If not, I presume our only option is to switch only a "buy to let" mortgage for the period we are sent abroad....which is not exactly the most efficient in processes....

All thoughts appreciated....