Property Equity
Hi everyone, My wife and I bought and lived in our flat in London 2011-2018 before emigrating Down Under (Melbourne). Been renting it out since then. Now we’re looking at the market forces for buying in Melbourne vs London (we just rent here, haven't bought) and, amongst other UK-London pull factors, think it’s a good time to return and buy again in London. We’d like to keep our flat and to take out equity from its worth to enable us to buy a new home big enough for us + our 2 kids. Not looking to become property magnates or buy-to-letters, just a slightly bigger place and keep the old flat as an asset for our kids etc. We’ve been advised by our mortgage lender that UK property law asks that you must have lived in your property as your primary home to free up this equity and this period is for minimum ‘6months’. We have all the info on ‘things to consider’ when using property equity to buy second homes (Stamp duty etc) but I cant seem to find any info online that corroborates this stipulation, or similar information on this.
I wonder if anyone else has moved back to UK/London and borrowed against their old property for this reason and if so how long did you have to live in it before getting your mortgage lender to provide the equity? Sparing the gory details, we’d like to avoid/minimise moving back to our property as we had a nightmare neighbour who really hated the fact we had two young kids running around (they adopted a campaign of intimidation for which the Council and Police did zip) ); so don’t want to put them through that again! But without using our properties equity we’re not going to be able to afford a new home.
Any advice/resuorces on equity borrowing in this situation, or insights into similar experience greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading.