Hi all we are in a bit of a dilemma…….

I am in the Royal air force and have just been posted to a camp which is 100 miles from our house which means it is too far to commute each day.

I have been living on the camp in single accommodation since January whilst my wife and children are living in our house , Im only getting to see them for a short period over the weekend and its starting to take its toll on family life.

So we have decided to and have put our house on the market and move into RAF married quarters together were i work.

Its a nice house and we have spent a fair bit doing it up and due to this we cant afford to let it go much below the asking price otherwise we will come away with no profit.

Since moving onto this camp i have got talking to a few people in my situation that have ended up renting their own homes out and i have to agree with them it makes sense to stay on the ladder and have someone else pay the mortgage.

Our aim as a family is to save as much as possible and use it as a deposit towards the next house we buy.

Speaking to few of the local estate agents in the area of our house and they seem to be crying out for houses like mine to rent to people and they seem to think I could easily rent my house out for between £600 and £650 pcm.

our aim was to sell our house and walk away with 10k(which i dont honestly think we would !) profit and save on top of this whereas if we keep the house and rent it out , tenants will pay my mortgage, we can stay on the property ladder and still save.

We aren’t really sure what to do for the best really, sell or rent

I know there are pitfalls if i go either way but what would you do in our position ??

thanks

Steve

As per the previous thread on this, speak to your mortgage provider and do the sums.

yep sorry spoke to the mortgage company today and they have said that as im military there would be no change to my mortgage !!

cheers

steve

p.s sorry ive asked again but me and the wife are going round in circles with it and wanted to get some more opinions on it to see if we have missed anything!!

I’d rent it out. Property prices are low at the moment and will almost certainly rise in the next few years. On the other hand, because the property market isn’t moving, rentals are doing pretty well.

Ask around, look at the property websites, but overall I’d go with the renting option.

In my experience, owners who rent out what was their family home make rubbish landlords

Care to enlighten me on that one please , I know if we rent it we wont ever move back into it and it would just be a house, not a home.

if you dont intend to return to it why are you keeping it?
For the long run you will probably make more money keeping it and having it as an investment that will eventually yield returns
Short run given aggro and the state of the housing market – unlikely to rise much but may go down then I would sell
So long term investment keep – short term fix sell it as less risky

Ok, leaving aside the fact that many cannot get past the idea that although it is still their house it is no longer their home, my experience has been that people who rent out their houses instead of selling do so without gaining a full understanding of what being a landlord involves.

Junkyard….. Ive got another 9 years to do in the air force so that’s how long we could be renting it for !!

Ebygomm, point taken and im currently reading all the websites i can on the responsibilities of a landlord.

whats the timescale?

there’s a few things to note here. one is that you’re not ‘entitled’ to any profit on a house. Another is that, if you rent it out for 3 years, the house will be worth comparitively less than it is now, as it will have had 3 years of careless tennants. Finally, house prices might rise, but they might also drop. If they dropped another 10%, would you even be able to sell it, or would you be stuck in negative equity?

if it was me, I’d get out. I’ve better things to do in my spare time than fix stuff other people have broken yet I own.

eta : just saw you’ve said 9 years. this makes the neg equity thing less likely (in 9 years time), and capital gains more likely. I’d personally still sell, but I’m rather risk-averse.

Probably rent then but in 9 years you need a home but ultimately one day the mortgage will be paid off and it will make you some money. Work out whether the hassle and the cost of a future purchase are worth the risk/gain.
I doubt it will be worth less in 10 years but it is unlikely to gain much either and what repairs will need doing in that timescale boiler , roof etc.

Yep i can see where you are coming from, also it would of had 9 years of the mortgage paid off and I will have more equity in it then too.

If we do rent it out we would probably overpay by at least 400 quid a month too to get the mortgage down even more.

I have friends who were in a similar situation. What they found extremely difficult, as a family with children, was living in quarters when their own home was considerably nicer! They ended up staying in quarters for a year or so then bought in their new area.

This is something that women would be more affected by, I would imagine. Also, ‘living on the job’ as it were and possibly becoming insular by not mixing outside of the Services circle.

Not an easy decision anyway.

I rent my flat out – not a family home but still.

Doesn’t have to be bad, be fussy about your tenants and go through an agency, stay well well away.

Not all tenants are scum, I rent a place and keep it in good condition. I have hassled the landlord exactly once in 2 years, when the drains were blocked. The garden is in better condition than when I moved in, which is a miracle.

And put aside some of your rental income for ongoing repairs, make sure the agent does regular inspections.

Getting your family together sounds to me IMHO like a huge benefit that should be more significant than making money on a property.

I didn’t mean to be terse before. Rent it out, use an agent and treat it as an investment ie detach yourself emotionally from it. Good luck with it, it sounds like a good plan and if the worst comes to the worst, you’ll still be able to sell and walk away.

Thanks for all the replies!!

going from your 1st post it was sounding like you were leaning towards renting it. Go with your gut and rent it, if the mortgage is getting paid then all is good.

can you afford the mortgage if its empty?
worth thinking about