Letting my house without telling the mortgage company

Reply to the comment left by "Tony Church" at "10/11/2013 - 19:46":

Hi Tony

I did see that Redstone had been fined by the FSA for not treating customers fairly but I couldn't find specific details.

I wouldn't necessarily say refusing consent to let or seeking possession for default is unfair, each case will have its own merits. I'm sure there must be more to this than meets the eye for Redstone to have been fined but that doesn't give their borrowers the right to breach their contracts without consequences.

You should have either obtained consent to let or sold the property. If you neither of these were possible due to nagative equity then you should have sought professional advice. It's not too late, please see http://www.property118.com/professional-adviser-introduction-request/
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Reply to the comment left by "Tony Church" at "10/11/2013 - 19:46":

they are not narrow minded they can simply sell your property on again and again. You are no longer a person when it comes to banks/ lenders etc you are simply a way of extracting money, when they finish with you they suck the life out of the next helpless soul. When they mess up they get bailed out and guess what? The tax payer gets the bill. There are laws, you have to find them and use them. I don´t know if there are any solicitor firms out there that have the balls to fight these sewer rats, I very much doubt it. Fear of losing their license or they probably earn more money defending the banking cartel. If enough people got together and started reading the small print etc we could change things. I did it with illegal bank charges and got all my money back. Now i am challenging my mortgage. We need to wake up to these monsters. You have rights

Reply to the comment left by "Gary Byrne" at "10/11/2013 - 20:58":

I object to any abuse of the system, whether that's borrowers or lenders. Innocent people like me end up paying for the abusers. We all have rights, we should all play by the rules and those who do not deserve the consequences for not doing so.
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exactly i have rights which they are abusing like they do to other lenders

Reply to the comment left by "Tony Church" at "10/11/2013 - 22:54":

Tony go onto http://www.getoutofdebtfree.org it is a great forum and along with this one and others. Together we can all find the illigalities in our mortgage 'agreements'. Let me know your thoughts

Going back to the original question on this thread there are two fundamentals that add another level of implication any landlord has to consider and they are:

1 - The lack of a consent to key will provide their lender the opportunity to back charge, repossess etc.

2 - provide the insurer a way out of any payout.

Third and biggest impact the 1 & 2 would put the landlord in breach of the terms of the tenancy nullifying any means to enforcement. Ie arrears would be lost etc.

However for decades we have come across agents and landlords who take these responsibilities lightly creating something of a black market. The problem only coming to light when the tenant has to enforce or the property is repossessed. As tenants would have to fund such enforcement it rarely comes about.

There is now at long last a simple means to stop this practice and that is simply report the issue to your trading standards office. With the sale and letting of property coming under the remit of the consumer protection act the implication of non disclosure of this fact would impose a breach of the act and with that prompt the TSO investigating. If the tenants transactional decision would have been different had they known. - the TSO WILL PROSECUTE. The tenant can then bring a civil case for recovery of damages etc. I suspect at that point the lender would get on the same band wagon and the landlord would regret the day they chose not to get one.

So in summary to let a property to day without a consent to let has a far greater risk of liability than it ever has and it will be the tenant who holds the landlords future in their hands - that doesn't make for a good place to be.

Note - it is not just agents that are liable under the CPR act, landlords are, big or small.

As this fact gets momentum it will not be long before the ambulance chasers (no win no fee legals) find a market here and start promoting the facts. Put simply, if a tenant wants a get out clause and the chance of a windfall, they want to be renting from a landlord who hasn't secured an up to date consent to let .

This is a subject just waiting for to hit national press and educate would be and existing tenants of this dark side of the market. Can't wait, as i look forward to the day when all tenants can be sure of a genuine tenancy. The upside of this coming into the open list that the bad landlord and agent will find it harder to stay in the market.

I have found the 'moderated co'. that Matthew keeps mentioning to be absolutely hopeless in Edinburgh. Also a bit annoying to hear him talk about the same thing again and again.

In one case the 'moderated co' came and said my flat could be let for 1100pcm. Not a great price. I let it myself for 1600. If I'd relied on their advice and let them manage it then I'd be about 750 per month worse off (including their management fee).

In another case the 'moderated' co opened an office nearby, which was open for 5 mins then shut down.

Hardly the best business model.

Reply to the comment left by "Kevin Thomson" at "12/04/2014 - 10:39":

Matthew was banned from posting on the basis that his only posts related to glowing testimonials for the company which moderated out. We got fed up of moderating his posts as it was like listening to a record that had got stuck.

If we had not have taken this action his posts would eventually done the company more harm than good.
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An excellent piece with all the issues covered about this matter. Well done to Mark and all the commentators who have analysed all angles on this matter.

Only thing we at LettingFocus would add is that we think it interesting that most lenders do not publish online, or indeed anywhere else, what their consent to let polices are, which rather neatly allows them to pick and choose their action dependent on what the current mortgage interest rates the applicant is now on.

If the applicant is on a very cheap historic rate, you can bet your boots that the lender will not say "Just give us £200 for a consent to let fee" and will be far more likely to say "You have to move to a new buy to let mortgage (with the current high rate of interest) and a high application fee."

Only if the borrower is on a high interest rate mortgage already, will they just ask for a small consent to let fee.

To us, this is unfair and a wrong business practice, but fairly typical of lenders policies.

I agree with what some posters have said: Ring the lender anonymously, record the call and then decide what to do.

Sad to say, but as the lenders are not playing fair with borrowers and seem to be picking and choosing on this, the lenders can hardly complain when borrowers try to "game" the lenders and not declare.

David Lawrenson

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "12/04/2014 - 10:44":

Quite, think we are all now fully aware of how good that letting agent is now!