Buy or sell-You Decide!

[SeaShellsHasSandInHerShoes]

argh, I'm just canvassing opinions as dh and I keep going round in circles, so what donyou think wenahould do?

I'm a sahm, hoping to go back to work this year
Dh is in a good job but not paid a fortune

We are accidental landlords-our rent does not cover our mortgage but is equal to the rent we pay here (v different city, cant move back, can't commute)

We have lost 1o% value ie no deposit
We can handle 1000k month repayment mortgage, but v open to problems when we lose tenants

The house we own is in a rougher area with poor schools so is never going to make ££, but it was an affordable first home 5 years ago.

I want to nest here, but it's expensive and we hae lost all deposit in our other home, so are 2 year away from buying.

Wwyd? (i don't think this a unique situation)
Tenants are moving out -

Sell?
Rent it out again?

....

Help

Have you thought about renting your existing house to the local council on a long term let? I looked into this a long time ago but not sure if things are still the same. From what I remember you lease the property to the council for a long term - in exchange for fixed rent. The council find tenants etc and looks after the property.

That way you will have a fixed income which you can then use in mortgage applications and you won't have to worry about empty periods.

I would say don't sell the rental and then build up a deposit and buy your own place where you are.

Here is an example for a council that does it here.

What is the rent like? I'm concerned as our last tenants were trouble

Sell! You're making a loss! House prices will definitely fall further in less than prime locations. I would sell sooner rather than later although I realise that it's easier said than done.

But if you cant buy again straight away we are just absorbing all
Of that loss are we not?

Tbh I want rid of it-but fear we will have to accept an awful price to do so.

We are also in a similar situation. My husband bought a house in an awful area before I knew him, he did buy it to live in but got made redundant and moved to London to work which is where I met him, and consolidated loads of debt into the property so it is now in about £20k of negative equity. We would love to get rid and tried a couple of years ago but after a few months we took it off the market. The thing is can you afford to make repayments while a sale goes through? It could take 6 months or less if you are lucky, a lot longer if you aren't.

We are lucky in that we bought a house together and over a period of 5 years have built up over £100,000 of equity. When we went to see if we could get a new mortgage to move house, the loss we made during the 6 months the BTL was vacant really affected our mortgage application, as it was not viewed as a self funding BTL property(quite a strict bank though, some other banks may not have taken it into account). Our mortgage offer was reduced by £30,000.

So like us, you are going to make a loss. Do you want to and can you afford to take the loss in one big hit, or do you want to slowly dripfeed money into a bad investment and lose smaller amounts of money money over a longer period of time, and hope that maybe in 5 years or more it picks up in value (or you might in the long run lose more money)?

Looking into see if the council can rent it out for you sounds like a good idea.

Tbh I spoke to an auction house today I'm so pissed off with the situation.

I wish we never bought it-it was fun in 2006, a "safe" buy as it was alot of house for cheap, never make a fortune but hold its value, but now it's just crap and a mill stone.

I have never made such a mistake in all my life :(