UK Landlord Forum / Life

I managed to remortgage my buy to let next door to me and the other flat my wife owns which she lets to her niece she is struggling to find anyone to refinance it and not sure how to go about it. Habito did mine no problem but hers is an issue, first problem is because it's under market rent as she's letting it to family but they said the main reason is because she owns the freehold:

Habito said:
Because you can essentially block any repossesion when you are the freeholder, on top of that with you living in the same block and there being a commercial outlet on the ground floor we were already thin on lenders, with it being freehold on top of that unfortunately we simply dont have any options here at Habito.

I'd be amazed if any landlord can get a BTL mortgage (without lying), letting to a family member. There were some specialist products for that, but they're quite restrictive.

What a nightmare, will keep looking then.

My niece works for my wife and instead of a pay increase we've just kept the rent low

It's not the level of rent that's the problem. It's the risk profile for BTL lending. Lenders know that the chances this tenant would ever be evicted are close to zero.

I see, hmmm your right we wouldn't just kick her out if they had problems

Is there any scope for reshuffling the equity among your properties to minimize the loan on this one?