We've rented our house as a high-end holiday let property. It is quite lucrative and we have it valued as a small business, so there's no council text and currently zero business rates. We've been overseas for the last 5 years in practical terms, and short of leaving the house vacant, we don't have an option. Having it as a rental property means we can block out weeks for our own use (our kids go to a nearby school as boarders). We pay tax, obviously, but I have written to HMRC for clarification on the new rules. Nothing heard now for 6 weeks...and we will look at transferring the majority of the property to my wife's name as she is unable to work in our current posting.
We took out the mortgage through a good broker and pointed out very clearly that we'd be moving from time to time and therefore would intend to let the property. In our most recent move, our mortgage lender referred to our property as 'buy to let' and it took me three months of arguing and showing them the mortgage application and acceptance paper work to prove that it wasn't. They also paid me £500 in an ex gratis payment for 'making it up'. This isn't the first time I have had problems with lenders who, it seems, don't have access to the mortgage application and other details and drop SP into the sh!t through their own maladministration. Some years ago, after we bought our first property near Lyneham, after 3 years we were offered a 3 month 'mortgage holiday' as a valued customer. They did not explain the ramifications of the break (eg impact on credit rating) and eventually admitted that the offer had been made 'in error'. This was a well-known high street lender and I found that their records keeping was abysmal. Again, they eventually made good, repaired our credit rating with Experion and waived redemption penalties as we picked up a much better offer with another lender.
Lessons from this? Caveat emptor and keep all paper work and written notes of all conversations (on one occasion a bank claimed that I was in breach of Data protection legislation by keeping notes of telecons...)