ASK527: Can I refinance forever? PLUS: My tenant is demanding an EV charger!

0:02Rob B:Hi, I'm Rob. And I'm Rob. And this is Ask Rob and Rob. Hey everyone, it's Ask Rob and Rob, the show where you get your questions in, predominantly property related. Sometimes you go a little off piece, but we don't mind that. And we do our very, very best to give you a good answer in return. We've done this over 500 times now, so we're well versed. But luckily, you always have a lot of questions and we'll guide you now to the place you can go to ask some more.

0:29Rob D:Yep, it's just one destination, propertyhub.net slash ask. If you go there, you can leave us a question in written form for our Sunday Times column, or you can get yourself on the show and be the envy of all your friends by leaving us a voice note.

0:42Rob B:Let's listen to our first question in from Amit. Hi, Rob and Rob. It's Amit here from London. Just wanted to say a big thank you for all your content and podcast. It's actually motivated me to start my own buy and select company for property investing. I'm actually buying a property via Property Hub Invest and another three elsewhere in the north. The question I had was before I set up the buy-to-let company, I had two properties in my own name. These are on an interest-only basis and every five years I look to take equity out of them if I can. The question I had was that at some point the lenders are going to look at my age and they won't be able to lend on the property anymore, I'm assuming.

1:27So what would be the strategy for managing that? Would that be simply to sell the properties or is there any other way around it? Thank you very much in advance for the answer.

1:39Rob B:Amit, thank you for your question. And you know what, this is a question that I've often been maxed. And I understand why, right? Because when you look at your own individual home mortgage, there's this pressure to pay it off, to make sure that you don't have a mortgage by the time you come to retire or very little left. And if you haven't got it paid off, then you could downsize. And that's the common pattern. That's the common way of how people do things. But what happens with buy-to-let? Well, the great thing with buy-to-let is that it's a lot more flexible. Lenders lend more on the property than you as the individual.

2:20Rob B:And it's fairly easy to hold buy-to-let with mortgages way into your 80s. And it's not just there's one niche product out there. There's many products out there. And there are some lenders that have no HLMIC at all. So you are fine. That's the good news. If you're using buy-to-let mortgages, which you should be, then you are absolutely fine. And this is not something that's just been introduced in the last few weeks. This has been the case for many years. Now, if you ever intend to sell, and you can, you'll need to stop taking equity out because your capital gains bill is going to end up being higher than your equity.

3:00Rob B:So you have to remember that if you keep maxing it out and the properties have gone up so much in value, you're going to have that capital gains bill to pay at the end. so you could stop taking equity at some point and give it decades for that loan to value level to drop but to repeat you are under no pressure to do that the buy to let products can stay with you for your entire life and then when you die those properties then can be passed on to whoever you want at that point it's up to you the good thing is you have choices you're under no pressure to pay down your mortgage you're under no pressure to to have it all sorted by a certain age if these properties have been serving you well continue to serve you well into your old age then you're absolutely okay to carry on holding them so not many people know that amit so i really appreciate

3:50Rob D:your question good luck okay great info there for amit let's see what we can do now for sue i'm a private landlord and my tenant has been in the property for only two months They have never mentioned before signing the tenancy that they require an EV charger, but they are now insisting that I pay for the installation. Under the current rules, I don't qualify for the EV charge point grant for landlords because I'm not that registered or registered at Companies House. Well, the tenant may be eligible for the renter grant instead. Could you explain how these two grants actually work in practice? Who is supposed to apply for what and whether a landlord is obliged to fund a charger when the need wasn't disclosed before the tenancy began.

4:35I'd also like to understand the practical issues around ownership and control of the charger. If a tenant applies for the grant or becomes the primary app owner, what happens when they leave? how can a landlord protect themselves from being locked out of the charger, losing warranty control, or facing fraudulent or unauthorised use during void periods? Overall, what is fair and miserable in these situations?

5:01Rob D:Sue, as Grange Hill taught us back in the day, just say no. I can't really show my age in this episode. There's no obligation at all for you to say yes to this request. They moved in knowing that there wasn't an electric vehicle charger, but can't suddenly demand that there is one. that's just not how it works so as a starting point don't worry you can absolutely just say no what are you talking about you can though if you want to give permission for them to install one but you have to go about this carefully so i'm going to assume that this is not leasehold there's no ultimate freeholder because then there'd be something else to be concerned about but let's assume this is a house that you own freehold if that's the case then you can give permission for them to install a charger there is a grant scheme they can use if they want to use that that's fine that's a process for them to manage but if you do agree to this then you must have a standalone agreement that sets out how it all works i would get that drafted up properly but essentially what it would need to say is that it's all their cost if there's any damage done to the fabric of the building while installing it then they have to put it right at their cost and critically when they move out it's yours they leave it at the property they can't take it with them obviously they can't really take it with them anyway but the important part is that they have to sign ownership of the account over to you.

6:14Rob D:So these charges are normally linked to an app and if they're the account holder on the app it's all linked to their phone number or email address then the charging point effectively becomes worthless to you if you don't have that access. So they need to agree to sign that over to you. I would assume if you offer this they're probably not going to want to do it and they're just trying their luck to see if you'll pay for it. But do think carefully before extending the offer because if they say yes then of course it does introduce some complexity and some risk that you need to manage. I'd say that if this was with a long-term tenant and it meant that they were likely to stay longer as a result and then when they eventually move out it's made my property more valuable because it's got this feature then I'd be minded to say yes but at the moment given it's someone who's just moved in and they're making what I'd consider a very unreasonable request I'd probably be more inclined to just say flat out no.

7:07Rob D:So I hope that at least puts your mind at rest and good luck with whatever happens.

7:10Rob B:so that's just done for another week thank you for listening we'll be back with the main event the property podcast on Thursday until then take care have fun bye-bye bye-bye