What will northern rock ask me in regards to renting out my property to someone else?
i realise that they just want the payment kept up which is fair enough Well, not quite. They may be about to change your mortgage to a ‘buy to let’ mortgage which will be at a higher rate. they will wish to know what sort of rental you are planning to enter into and for what sort of period. The reasoning behind this is that having rental tenants in a house creates all sort of potential problems banks are quite simply not prepared to entertain on a regular rate mortgage. This includes you defaulting on the mortgage – if you were living there yourself they can repossess, but with tenants in, they are unable to because the tenants would have rights. Similarly they take the view that tenants are less likely to kepp the place in good repair than an owner occupier. Northern Rock are, I know from experience, extremely strict on mortgage terms (and since they are now government funded will be under still more pressure to lend responsibly). So there is little doubt that you will be looking at a
