Is the mortgage market turbulence getting you down? Have you got a mortgage-related question you need answering? Email in, and we will get one of our experts to reply. Nick Mendes, mortgage technical manager at John Charcol, has given his advice to a reader below. If you have a question for our experts, email us at money@theipaper.com.
Question: My husband and I are looking at buying a holiday home in Pembrokeshire, around £280,000, that our family would use several times a year, mainly school holidays. We would like to let it out for the rest of the year, maybe 15 to 20 weeks, to help cover the mortgage and running costs. We already have a £310,000 residential mortgage on our main home with about seven years left. Would we be able to get a mortgage on the holiday home given we would only be renting it out part of the time? Does letting it change what type of mortgage we need, and would occasional letting be treated differently to running it as a full holiday let?
Answer: The starting point is how the property will be used because that is what determines the type of mortgage a lender is likely to consider.
Shorts
A holiday home used purely by you and your family may be treated as a second residential property. That does not make it impossible to mortgage, but it does mean the lender will assess the new borrowing alongside your existing mortgage, household bills, debts and other commitments.
