It's a high street property in Wigton, cumbria. First floor, private entrance, 3 double bedrooms, 15' living room, 12' dining room. Original floor tiles and windows (not necessarily a selling point!) I would link to the estate agent but they've not got it on their website for some reason. There's another phone call I need to make!
Indeed you do. There is nothing on Zoopla, for instance, and there should be. But I would resist the temptation to keep chopping and changing estate agents: first, it's expensive; second, buyers notice these things and assume you are desperate to sell; and third, the reason it isn't selling is probably because there are precious few buyers around, not because you or the agents are doing anything wrong.
We bought for £70k, we were about to sell it for £54k, which would cost us just short of £2000 to clear the mortgage left on it.
You can always sell a property at a price, just not a price that is sensible. If you put it in an auction without reserve, it will undoubtedly sell, but that would be hugely risky when the OMV is already less than the mortgage. But handing it back to the bank is even worse, because that is exactly what they will do and with little incentive to limit their losses. So you would end up paying the shortfall anyway, plus their inflated fees.
My son is living in it at the moment, he's entitled to housing benefit if we can convince them we're not scamming them. Honest we're not! Hence the need for permission from the bank.
My inclination would be to rent it out and if your son cannot get HB let him find somewhere else to live and get a different tenant. You would need to go through it with someone from the bank who actually knows what they are talking about, not just a counter-chimp or an advice line - IME banks will charge an eg extra 1% on the mortgage rate but only apply their unrealistic rent/repayment ratio when you are after a buy-to-let proposition, not in your circumstances. And I would be prepared to battle it out with them, because IIRC the FCA takes a dim view of banks refusing permission to let just so that they can get the fees and higher interest rate from swapping you to a different type of mortgage. Which bank is it, BTW?
You could just not tell the bank anything, but there are risks in that strategy. And if you do, you must at least get proper landlord's insurance and eg gas safety certificates, otherwise you could find yourself in a much bigger hole than you already are.
I don't think it's a question of having to hang on until you have paid the mortgage off. Wigton like many northern towns has had its property market battered in the last four or five years, and it could be a almost as long until values rise to repay your £70,000. But all you really need is for things to pick up until you are able to clear the mortgage, which is likely to happen before the next election because HMG always tries to engineer a modest rise for the voters.
