About to be a landlord - do I need to tell existing lender we are renting property out?

[NewbieLandlord]

We signed up to a 3 yr fixed rate earlier this year as at that time, we intended to stay in our house.

However, we have since found another property and so wish to rent our place out. Do we need to tell the mortgage provider?

I am totally in favour of being honest and doing it by the book but we cant afford the extra money that would be incurred as a buy to let property and the extra money required each month would not be covered by the rent....would they let us keep our existing deal? It is a worry tbh

Do we need to inform the tax man, even though only making no more than £50 profit each month, which is going to be swallowed by insurance etc anyway?

yes - ring them up and find out -my lender is only charge an admin fee and keeping us on same rate -
and you will need to do a tax return - however probably not for a while - you can set all costs against tax - eg mortage interest (but not repayment of captial) , insurance - I think - and maitanance cost etc etc

if costs are as tight as this is worth moving I wonder mind -

I did this a couple of years ago with my flat.

You do need to tell your mortgage lender - they won't force you to change your mortgage to a buy-to-let though, mine just asked me to fill out a form, told me I couldn't take anyone on benefits, and that was it.

You will need to start filling out a tax return if your income is over a certain amount, even if it's being swallowed up by the mortgage. You can offset spending on the property such as repairs etc though, so make sure you keep hold of your receipts. I don't make much money on my place either and I didn't have to fill out a tax return form last year because of this - I can't now remember the exact reason why but there's a lot of useful information on directgov.

They will normally give permission but charge you an admin fee. Mine was about £300 and that was 3 yrs ago (thanks Abbey/Santander!). Your building insurance will be invalid without consent so not worth it - what if your tenants burnt the house down and you couldn't claim on it because you wanted to save a few hundred pounds? Building insurance for landlords is also more expensive. All in, it was more hassle than it was worth but this was back in summer 2008 when we became reluctant landlords after 2 potential buyers failed to get a mortgage (much to their/our surprise at the time). We ended up selling 2 yrs later when the market had picked up a little.