Can someone please walk me through this?

[Orangelizard]

I currently own a flat with a residential mortgage on it. I'm having to move to a different city for work purposes but I very much want to come back here in a few years so I don't want to sell it.

Equally, I don't really want to pay rent in the new city so I'm looking into buying something very tiny / cheap as I can but I will still need a bit of a mortgage on it.

I'm trying to understand how/if I can rent out the property I currently live in. If I port my existing my mortgage to the new property, do I then need to take out a buy to let mortgage on my current one?

Or if I didn't port my existing mortgage - could I apply for a temporary permission to let from my lender and take out a new, second residential mortgage on the new property?

I'm in Scotland if that makes any difference.

Any help hugely appreciated! I need to move quite quickly and it's all a bit stressful!

If you port your residential mortgage you then would need to qualify for a BTL mortgage - which nowadays means you generally need to demonstrate you’d be able to make the mortgage payments even if the property was untenanted. Is that realistic? Best bet is to speak to a good mortgage broker. When I lived in Scotland I found these guys pretty good: www.themortgagebrokerscotland.co.uk But nationwide brokers such as London and Country are probably also equally good in the nations, despite the name.

And yes, if you didn’t port you could ask for permission to let; but that leaves you with the existing residential mortgage which means you’re unlikely to qualify for a mortgage for your own home (unless you’re pretty wealthy, which is a game changer.)

Thanks Comtesse!

Definitely not extremely wealthy, sadly, but I only have about £80,000 on the mortgage for my existing flat and I think I could get a tiny flat where I'm going for about £50,000 so it didn't seem totally unaffordable.