Help! Renting in school catchment area

[Bearclaw678]

Hoping for some impartial advice!

2 years ago we made the move from central london to the commuter suburbs and bought our first family home. We generally like where we are but about 1 year after moving here the nursery our son was in closed down so we had to send him to a nursery in the next town/ village .

We had never ventured to this new town before and were pleasantly surprised. We now spends lot of time there as it has our sons nursery, our friends, our gym and is generally more our vibe. We wish we had discovered it sooner.

we want to sell our home and move to this comparatively priced town but due to the early repayment mortgage charge, stamp duty and current interest rates it would break us at this time. We would have to wait probably 2-3 years when our mortgage expires and hopefully interest rates and the early repayment charges reduce.

we are now at the point where our son is looking to start school/ reception and we are leaning towards a school in this adjacent town where we would currently be out of the catchment area. To be clear this school is not objectively better than the school currently local to us. But as we plan to move to the new town we don’t want him to change schools/ have a longer commute later down the line.

We are considering renting out our home and renting in the new area which would not only help our sons school application but also give us a better quality of life.

Both tenancies would be long term, min 18 months and towards the end of the 18 month period we would aim to sell our own home. The house we rent would be our primary residence.

After reading some threads on here I’m concerned this would be flagged as “fradulent”. Any thoughts?

It’s only fraudulent if you rent the house to use as your home address for school applications and don’t actually live there.

Go for it OP, it sounds like you’d be much happier there than where you are now.

Its seen as potentially fraudulent if you don't dispose of the old property (either selling or renting out).

You are allowed to genuinely move.

I think you need every possible paperwork and bill to be in your new address before you apply and until after he’s started school.

dont forget to factor in income tax on your rental income and check if your current mortgage allows it to be rented out (usually fine but don’t assume). Also you will need insurance for rental

It would only be fraudulent if wasn't your main place of residence. Putting grandparents address is fraudulent, renting somewhere near the school and keeping it empty / letting mates live there while you continue to live in your house is fraudulent.

renting somewhere and living there and making it your home while you happen to own somewhere elsewhere is not fraudulent.

go for it (try and suss out the landlords situation though - will they kick you out because they need the address back to apply for their own kids etc...)

Not fraudulent at all.
The rented house would be your home address.

It depends on LA, some will only accept the owned address if it is within a certain distance of the school. Would you be unlikely to get a place from your existing address?

Not fraudulent but in our area if you are renting but own a house within a 20 mile radius of the property you are renting, then they see the rented one as a “property of convenience” and would use the address of your owned house.

Have you asked your mortgage company if you can port your mortgage over? That only leaves the stamp duty charge and the solicitors fees.

Your mortgage will be affected by renting out your property and your mortgage company may not allow it. Currently you will have a residential mortgage and you will possibly need to change it to reflect it being rented out. Your first port of call is to contact your mortgage company and ask those two questions, possibly porting the mortgage and can you rent your property out.

Plus if you rent your property out you will pay tax on the income too surely.

Is the new school oversubscribed? The thing is renting your property out could still look fraudulent because it gives you the opportunity to move back as you still own it. Clearly it is commutable now as you do it for the nursery.

Thanks everyone. Really appreciate it!

Unfortunately wouldn’t get in from our current place. It’s quite far out.

Check your LA rules. Ours are explicitly clear if you own a property which has been your main residence for any period of time, this has to be the address for a school application unless you sell it. They don’t accept a rental or a newer purchase for main residence.

Other counties would accept the rental as your main residence as long as you were living there

Thanks.

so the new school wasn’t over subscribed historically, but as a result this year they reduced their number of classes per intake so it now is by about 15 places. Annoying as last year we would’ve been fine.

All good points re the mortgage bits. Thank you!

Depends on the school regulations. One of our local schools has a rule that if you still own a house that was the main family residence within the last 3 years, they use that to calculate distance rather than your rented property. This is because a lot of people were renting out their actual houses and buying a small flat in the catchment area to get their oldest child a place, then moving back into their actual house miles out of catchment once they are in, and using the sibling rule to get their other children places.

That’s a heavily oversubscribed outstanding London comprehensive though, where people are saving £25k per year per child on private school fees if they get their children admitted. Catchment area is 700 metres, which is fuck all for a secondary. The average primary isn’t going to have parents gaming the system so heavily.

We've ported our mortgage before so that's definitely an option. Also, we're not permitted to rent our house out on our current mortgage terms, so that's definitely might be an issue.

When would you need to apply by? Arranging all of this could take quite a while so I'd look into it sooner rather than later.

When I worked in school admissions it was always where you paid your community charge. Owned, rented, whatever - we didn't care.

Based on some of the comments above I did some digging and the local authority website says…

“we will not generally accept a temporary address if the main carer of the child still possesses a property that has previously been used as the child’s main address”

assuming this then means they don’t care if I am renting out my existing property? They will assume it’s my main residence

You know you can port your mortgage without paying an early repayment charge right?

i did but was never sure how easy it was in reality but based on the above comments it’s something I will definitely look into!

15th Jan 2025 is the deadline so not a huge amount of time! Although we have potentially found the place we could rent but based on the local authority website it may be too much of a risk/ jump

Not fraudulent at all. A faff for you maybe, but an understandable decision in your circumstances. A fraudulent application would be one where you list an address you do not currently live at (for example, if you rent out your current home but used that address to try and obtain a place at a school in that area).

People move all the time to be nearer schools of their choice, whether that's buying or renting. As long as you can prove that is your current address (the one you're registered to pay council tax at etc) it's fine. It doesn't matter that you rent it and actually own something in a different area. If you're renting that out, it's not your place of residence, your rented property would be. You intend to sell and buy closer to the school when the time is right. It's not like you're going to move back to your owned property once a place at your school of choice is obtained. That would be fraudulent, but your situation is not.

However, you don't have long! This arrangement would be seen as a fraudulent application is if you hadn't moved by the time you applied, and simply put the new rented address on the application in the hope you'll be there by the time he starts. It has to be your address at the time of applying. If it is, there isn't an issue. If he starts school next year you only have until this coming January, which really isn't long to sort all this out.

Please check your facts before posting as there are many councils across the country who would not accept the new address as a permanent residence for the purpose of a school. If you’d bothered to read all her posts before posting, you would know OP’s LA fits into this category

OP's intentions are genuine but there are many many parents who will temporarily rent to be on the doorstep of a good school and then move back.

Wow, rude! Clearly everyone's experiences are different. If OP has researched themselves that this may be an issue (not clear in original post) then my comments are hardly going to make them think "oh ok, maybe it won't be an issue after all as one person on Mumsnet says it's alright". In my experience this situation is ok, I can only share my own experiences.

There are no rules on Mumsnet saying you must have time to read all replies before responding so please don't try to police the board, especially not in such a rude patronising way. A simple "this isn't the case everywhere" reply would have sufficed if you wished to flag this up to me. There is is absolutely no need for such aggressive rudeness.

Enjoy the rest of the day. I hope you're able to end it in a significantly better mood than the one you have woken up in.

OP, if you've read that it could be an issue where you live your best option is to contact the school, explaining and enquiring where you would stand.

Alternatively, is it really the end of the world if you stayed where you are currently and moved your child in a few years? I understand you don't wish to unsettle them but so many children do move schools at least once, due to a variety of circumstances, and for most it's absolutely fine. Especially if you already have friends/links in the area you plan to eventually move to. Just a thought?

If you change your main residence to the rented property, you run the risk of being liable for capital gains tax when you eventually sell your current property, I believe?

I did this, rented out my z2 flat (that my family didnt fit in after the birth of DD), and rented a larger house 8 miles away.

I called the council and they were fine with this, which is good as those 8 miles would have taken me forever to cross on a school run so would have been impossible for DS to attend the school in the old area.

Renting out your current home means likely having to change mortgage, either interest only or BTL product, thars the first thing I check out. You need to pay tax on rental income, at either 20 or 40% depending on income. You need landlord insurance and probably letting agent fees. Add this all up and compare to the cost of selling up. Also consider that tenants can be troublesome, rent arrears, repairs/redecoration needed when selling.