Have I f*up my finances?

Honestly, if you can give them the money back.

I'm in Hartlepool and every few days on our Facebook community pages we see a new message from an excited first time out of town Landlord saying they've bought a house in Dent Street or Sheriff Street or Cornwall Street, as an investment for their kids. First question we ask them back is 'have you completed yet' then point out that the area they're buying or have bought in are riddled with drugs and machete attacks.

They're cheap because run of the mill people won't live in them, and you then have major problems with trying to get reasonable people to rent them.

What rate is the mortgage advance on / fixed for and are there early repayment charges.

You may be a rare lucky winner if you are in a 5 year at 4pc or less. In that interest rates are increasing and you can stash it in a cash ISA (over 3 years) / high interest savings account and make a small profit risk free

If you're certain you don't want to / or can't afford to buy another property speak to the mortgage lender and ask what back-tracking is available for you as your situation has now changed and you no longer need the advance or equity release.

However, if I was in your situation, a high-earner who could afford the new mortgage on the London property, I would keep the 100K equity release (but not the advance payment if possible) and use this to pay for both my DCs Uni education in full. But this is my ultimate dream at the moment. I do have two teenager DC and I'm currently in the process of working out how we could possibly do this for them (ie. no holidays for at least 5 years!)

@Mgup being a landlord is tough. So many hoops to jump through and a well thought out business plan needed before you even think of buying.

I'd put the money in a high interest account for now and do some more research.

Depending on your mortgage rate then you might find you can get an interest rate higher than this.

I live in a rubbish area and I would be lucky to get anything decent for £170k these days. And that's Scotland!

I agree. I live in the midlands in a 3 bed semi-detached house. Mid-sized, no garage, nothing particularly special although admittedly a nice area, and it's worth about £330k.

To be honest it doesn't sound like were ever really in a position to afford to do this.

£170k is a very very small budget to be looking to buy a house with even in the midlands - I think people in London imagine you can buy a house elsewhere with a few peanuts but this is not the case unless you are looking in very deprived areas where the rental yield would be much lower and the whole thing would be riskier as you'd be less likely to attract stable, full time working tenants.

If you only have 100k equity in your current property you need to focus on continuing to pay this mortgage down not trying to buy a second property.

Join some landlord fb groups! I joined with the intention of buying a place to let until my daughter was older but pretty much all landlords are jumping ship due to the new rules they are bringing in. I certainly won’t be buying to let anymore!

Have you worked through the business case for tax, maintenance etc? As an accidental landlord I can tell you there’s not much money in it unless you have several properties or multi occupancy properties. Not even sure you can 100% rely on the gains in property value (which will be taxable) anymore.

I’m slightly surprised you borrowed an extra £53k without serious research into prices. Have you factored in having a buy to let mortgage, tax and agent fees(unless you’re planning to travel up to the Midlands every time the rental property has a leak or other problem)? The rental market is pretty brutal for landlords right now. Good luck.