Renting out your own home?

A question about : Renting out your own home?

I was thinking about the 'Pay off your mortgage in 2 years' programme, and one of the ideas they seem to push is to rent out your own home, and to rent somewhere cheaper for you to live, and to put the difference into the mortgage.

A couple of them seem to have considered it but not really followed it through - is it something you'd ever consider?

(I don't think it would work for us because our house hasn't been fully decorated since we moved in, so some rooms have paper peeling off the walls etc, and of course with young children like ours you don't want to uproot them too often.)

Best answers:

• What is the point of that? It just wouldn't work in milton keynes as renting is just as expensive as having a mortgage and why waste your money paying off a house that you are happy enough to move out of. I believe if you are happy enough to scale down from a 3 bed home to a 1 bed flat, why not just sell your house and buy a smaller one, thus paying off a large chunk, if not all, of your mortgage.
  I love my house and I would never rent it out to someone else and move out! That is absurd! If I was desperately strapped for cash I might take in a lodger in the spare room, but I would not leave my house in the hands of strangers.
  But then that is just me...
  Kat
• And considering you'd have to get permission from mortgage lender anyhow -
  you wouldn't gain from rent going down the drain
• No good if your mortgage is 700 and the flat next door is rented for 550 either
• Irrelivant if your staying in the same area, if your going to be working abroad or out of the area eg other end of the country and you plan an returning at another date then its a possibility but only if you can get enough to cover your morgage + your rent at the other property
• I rent out my house and live elsewhere, but I can see that it wouldn't work for everyone. I am lucky enough to own about 30% of my house, so the mortgage isn't too high and I bought in a town with a strong rental market. I also carried out a lot of improvements on the house whilst I was living there and so it can now command a greater rental income than other properties with the same purchase value. We also managed to find a larger house to rent where we now live for less money, but I think that it was a fluke finding it! We don't make a huge profit, but someone else is paying the mortgage for us...
  BWT it was really straightforward getting the mortgage company's permission.
• I seem to recall that in the programme the OP is referring to, the couple in question had the option of moving in with their children for a couple of years, or living in a caravan - much cheaper (although less desirable?) than renting another property.
• Seems a bit extreme to me, but that seems to be the point of the programme overall
• I live in a small flat, and I would be unlikely to find a place to rent for less than mine would rent for, the really cheap option is to move back in with my parents, which will probably end up with one of us living for free at Her Majesty's Pleasure!
• So much of the advice in this programme is only useful for a tiny percentage of the population
  - those with marketable skills outside their main career
  - those with spare time
  - those with houses bigger than they need
  - those with lots of valuable junk in the attic