Living in your own Btl property

[Cloglover]

Does anyone have experience of this? Will a mortgage company insist on changing the mortgage back to a residential one? Or do you get a certain amount of grace?

I am thinking about leaving my partner but as we have a mortgaged home that we are living in, and a buy to let, I wouldn't be able to get any help towards housing and my solo income is too low to afford to rent and live. So I feel trapped, which isn't helping.

I would love to be able to move back to our Btl. It was my home for 15 years and the kids would feel a lot less uprooted as it was their home too. As the Btl is just repayment, I could just about afford to cover the mortgage and my living expenses. But obviously the rules are that a Btl mortgage are for renting, not living in. However if we transferred it to a residential mortgage 1) I doubt I would qualify for a mortgage for the amount we have left to repay and 2) I wouldn't be able to afford the repayment anyhow.

Anyhow, in the first instance I just want some breathing space. I don't know what I want to do long term. But I just need to leave my current home and this feels the only way I can do it.

Does anyone have any experience. How flexible are mortgage companies? Will they turn a blind eye? I just want to be able to move out and pay for myself and my kids.

Depends on your lender - some might agree to it, especially if it's not likely to be neceassarily long term. However they may say no and ask you to switch to a resi mortgage instead... And if you don't get permission you'd technically be in breach of your mortgage terms.

When you say it's 'just repayment', do you mean interest only? Otherwise the cost of the residential mortgage repayments would almost certainly be lower.

It's also worth remembering evictions are taking a very long time (6 months?) at the moment, so if you want to be able to do this soon, you'd be best to get the ball rolling.

Thank you for you reply. Sorry yes, it's just interest only.

www.theguardian.com/money/2013/feb/06/move-in-buy-to-let-property

Our mortgage terms are very clear that we absolutely cannot live there.

It's not allowed, sorry

I have done this OP, when renovating what would be my actual house, for over a year.

Frankly, as long as the mortgage gets paid and the mortgage company have no reason to investigate you, in all likelihood you'll be fine.

However there are a few caveats to that/things to think about -
How long will you need to do it for? Will any mortgage get renewed during the time period? Makes it riskier if so, as they will spend some time looking at you.
You'll need to retain a presence at your "official house" ie keep some post going there such as utility bills or something with your name on in case you get asked for proof of residence
Stay on the electoral roll at your "official residence", I'd advise also to stay on the council tax bill as well and pay your share in addition to paying council tax at the new place, again so nothing looks odd if a lender were to look
Make sure you don't default on any payments on your mortgage or give any reason at all for your lender to investigate you

Remember that ultimately you would be committing mortgage fraud and if your ex-P wanted to be a twat he could cause a lot of trouble for you with one phone call

The alternative would be to move your BTL to a residential interest only. You could make tentative enquiries with an independent financial advisor about this. Frame it as "thinking about" etc to find out your options, and don't tell them if you plan to keep it as BTL and live in it anyway, it puts them in a difficult spot. Probably also useful to get some advice from an IFA anyway if you're going to move out long term.

Good luck, happy to help with other questions

Oh dear! It doesn't look that favourable. I was wondering if they were flexible like when you have a residential mortgage you used to be able to let it for up to about 3 years if you needed to move out for whatever reason and most mortgage companies seemed fine with it.

I'm far too much of a worrier to be dealing with the stress of pretending to live elsewhere so thanks for your comprehensive reply @Xanaduyourenotthatfar . It's given me a lot to ponder. I might find myself in the position of needing to apply for uc or some kind of income top up if something happened to my job because of the currently shitty economy so I would need to be honest about my living situation. I wasn't aware you could still get interest only resisidential mortgages - that would be the best route to go down. I know I'm lucky that partner would never do anything malicious. But he wouldn't be able to cope with anything dishonest so he wouldn't support me moving in without telling the mortgage company unless it was an emergency.

I don't even know at this point if I want to split up - I just need some space, my own space to gather my thoughts.

Why not call your mortgage provider and see what options you have, they might be more flexible than you think especially at the moment