The Assumption Most Families Make

The default assumption is that renting your home while travelling is obviously the sensible financial move. The property covers itself, perhaps generates surplus income, and is waiting for you when you return. Selling feels drastic, final, and risky.

That framing is understandable but it leads a lot of families to skip the analysis and commit to renting before they’ve tested whether it actually works financially. The problem is that gross rental income and net rental income are very different numbers, and the costs sitting between them are both significant and easy to underestimate when you’re in the planning stage.

The Gross vs Net Problem: Running the Real Numbers

Before you decide anything, you need to build a realistic net rental income figure. Not what the property will rent for. What you will actually receive, monthly, after all costs.

The main costs to account for are as follows.

Letting agent fees for full management (which is the only realistic option for most families managing a property from the other side of the world) typically run at 12 to 15 percent of monthly rent. On a £1,500 per month rental, that is £180 to £225 leaving before anything else.

Landlord insurance is not optional and is a different product from standard home insurance. Buildings cover, liability protection, and ideally loss of rent cover for the period you’re away will cost somewhere between £150 and £400 per year depending on property value and the level of cover. Budget for the higher end.

A maintenance reserve is something most landlords hold as 8 to 10 percent of annual rent specifically for repairs and upkeep. On the road with two young children, you will not be available to manage maintenance decisions quickly. Things will still need fixing. Budget for them.

Mortgage product costs if your property has a residential mortgage. We cover this in the next section, but the short version is that you cannot simply let your home without telling your lender. The cost of doing this properly adds to your outgoings.

Income tax on net rental profit is a further reduction depending on your tax position. Our article on UK tax residency and long-term travel covers the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme specifically, and is worth reading if you are planning to rent.

Once you have run those costs against your expected monthly rent, you have your real net figure. For some properties, particularly those with lower mortgages, strong local rental demand, and no significant outstanding maintenance, that figure is meaningful and renting makes clear financial sense. For others, the margin is thin enough that the complexity and stress of being a landlord from abroad is simply not worth it.

When we spoke with local lettings agents we could have achieved around £1,500 per month in gross rent. The agents fee’s typically ranged from 8-12%, insurance was roughly £20 per month, and we concluded on a standard 10% maintenance reserve of £150. Costs of renting our home out would have therefore cost around £320 per month – before we took off our £1,350 mortgage, meaning it was not financially viable for us to rent and would only be worth it in the long run if we really wanted to keep the family home.

For us, the killer of this idea was our high mortgage costs, which was a decision we made before our decision to travel long term. For some families with a bigger gap between gross rent and mortgage costs may be able to make this work financially.

The Mortgage Conversation You Need to Have First

If your property has a residential mortgage, you cannot let it out without your lender’s knowledge. Doing so is a breach of your mortgage conditions and can result in the lender demanding immediate repayment.

The two routes are consent-to-let and a full product switch to a buy-to-let mortgage.

Consent-to-let is permission from your existing lender to let the property on your current mortgage. Some lenders grant it readily, others are reluctant, and most charge either a one-off fee, an interest rate uplift, or both. A rate increase of 0.5 to 1 percentage point above your existing rate is common. On a £200,000 mortgage, that is an additional £83 to £167 per month on a repayment basis, which goes directly into your costs calculation above.

A buy-to-let mortgage is a full product switch and typically involves a new arrangement fee, a new rate, and a new set of lending criteria. It is the right route if you are planning to let the property long-term on return, but adds friction and cost to a pre-departure process that already has plenty of both.

Whichever route you take, the conversation with your lender needs to happen before your tenants move in, not after. Arranging this can take several weeks, so factor it into your pre-departure timeline.

The Case for Renting: When It Actually Works

Renting is the right decision when the numbers support it, and there are clear circumstances where they do.

If the net rental income after all costs is meaningfully positive each month, the financial case for renting is straightforward. The threshold of “meaningful” varies by family, but if you’re netting £300 to £500 or more per month after everything, that is real money that contributes to your travel budget and justifies the management overhead.

If your mortgage is small relative to the rental value of the property, either because you are mortgage-free or because you have significant equity and a low outstanding balance, the costs above eat a much smaller proportion of gross rent. The maths look considerably better.

If you have a strong intention to return to the same area and the property would be difficult or significantly more expensive to repurchase on your return, the long-term cost of selling may outweigh the short-term gain of releasing equity. Property markets in some parts of the UK have moved significantly in recent years. If you’d struggle to buy back in, renting preserves your position.

If you have a trusted family member or close friend who is willing to act as a local point of contact for the property and can help manage urgent situations without you needing to be available across a significant time difference, the management burden becomes substantially lighter.

The Case for Selling: The Equity Argument

The case for selling rests on a straightforward question: what else could your equity be doing?

If your property is worth significantly more than the outstanding mortgage, selling releases a capital sum that can be put to work rather than sitting in bricks and mortar generating a thin net yield. For families with meaningful equity and a marginal net rental return, the comparison is not between renting and nothing. It is between a modest, management-heavy net monthly income and the growth potential of the same capital invested elsewhere.

We chose to place some of our equity in stocks and shares ISAs, which allowed the capital to remain within a tax-efficient wrapper with the potential for real growth throughout the trip. The annual ISA allowance (currently £20,000 per person, so £40,000 for a couple per tax year) means a significant portion of the proceeds from a property sale can be sheltered from capital gains and income tax on returns.

This is not a risk-free choice. Investment values go up and down, and you may return from your trip to find the capital is worth less than when you left. That is a genuine downside and should be factored into any decision. But for families whose rental yield, after all costs, was barely covering the mortgage and leaving minimal surplus, the comparison is between marginal guaranteed returns and higher potential returns at the cost of higher risk. That is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by default.

When we sold our home, which we heavily renovated from top to bottom, we had a significant sum which, as mentioned above, was partially put to work for a longer period of time in the stock market, and the rest has been kept in a high interest savings account ready to be deployed to help us to build new income streams, with a view to preserving our ability to travel long term as a family.

There is also a practical simplicity argument. Selling removes the ongoing management burden entirely. No lender to notify. No letting agent to brief and monitor. No maintenance decisions to authorise from a different time zone. No tax filings for rental income. No anxiety about what tenants are doing to the property. For some families the peace of mind that comes with a clean break is worth something beyond the pure financial calculation.

What We Did and Why

Clare and I sat down together several times and ran through all possible options. We landed on only two possible viable options for us; either rent it out or sell. We went deep into an excel spreadsheet with the numbers on both sides (one of Clare’s many strengths), and came to the conclusion selling was our best option. This was mainly for the reason it would have resulted in a net monthly loss to rent it out at current market rates, but also the potential for issues to occur whilst we were away like boilers breaking down or voids, and the stress this would have caused us. It then also allowed us to get excited about the potential future options of putting that capital to work to build other income streams, like TravelMint.

The short version is that when we ran our net rental figure properly, the margin after agent fees, insurance, our mortgage product costs, and a maintenance reserve was not sufficient to justify the complexity of managing a UK property from Southeast Asia for an open-ended period. Selling was the cleaner, more financially rational decision for our circumstances.

Managing the Proceeds From Abroad

Whether you sell or rent, managing UK finances from the other side of the world requires some practical preparation.

For families who sell and hold capital in UK accounts, the main consideration is ensuring your banking setup allows you to manage transfers, account maintenance, and any UK financial admin without relying on expensive international wire transfers or being dependent on physical branch access.

For families who rent, the more immediate concern is receiving rental income cleanly and managing outgoing UK payments (mortgage, insurance, maintenance invoices) without the friction and cost of standard international bank transfers.

In both cases, a Wise account is the most practical tool for managing UK financial transactions from abroad. Holding a GBP balance, converting to local currency as needed, and making UK payments at the mid-market rate without paying bank transfer fees is exactly what Wise is built for. It is what we use for all of our UK financial admin on the road.

One important distinction to be clear on: Wise is an e-money institution, not a UK bank, and balances held in Wise are not FSCS-protected in the same way as a UK bank account. The proceeds from a property sale should sit in FSCS-protected accounts, not in Wise. Wise is a working account for managing the flow of money, not a vehicle for holding significant capital. Open a Wise account here.

Our guide to setting up your finances before long-term travel covers the full banking setup in more detail, including which accounts to use and why.

The Emotional Dimension

The financial framework above is necessary but not sufficient. Selling a family home before a long-term trip is not just a financial transaction. For most families it is one of the most significant decisions they make in the process of actually committing to go, and it carries emotional weight that a spreadsheet doesn’t capture.

There is anxiety in the finality of it. Once you’ve sold, the return option becomes more complicated. You are not leaving a base to come back to. You are genuinely setting out without a fixed anchor in the UK, which is a different psychological experience from knowing the house is there waiting.

We found that the anxiety was real in advance and largely dissipated once we had left. When it came close to completing on our house sale, I’ll be honest – I had some last minute doubts as we really loved the house but loved the area even more. Saddleworth was where we raised both our young girls from babies and we really enjoyed our quiet, green, community village. Will we head back there one day? Maybe, but reflecting on that decision now as I sit on a beach in Da Nang, Vietnam, six months later – I wouldn’t change a thing.

What we’d say to families wrestling with this: the emotional discomfort of selling is real and worth acknowledging, but it is worth separating from the financial analysis. If the numbers say sell and you’re not selling primarily because of emotional attachment to the property or anxiety about commitment, that is worth naming clearly before making a decision that will cost you materially over a multi-year trip.

Who This Decision Is and Isn’t Straightforward For

The decision is most straightforward for families where the net rental yield is clearly positive or clearly marginal. If you run the numbers and the net figure is strong, rent. If you run the numbers and the margin barely covers your costs, the case for selling is worth taking seriously.

It is most complex for families with significant emotional attachment to a specific property or location, those who are uncertain about the length of their trip, and those in property markets where re-entry on return would be difficult. These are legitimate factors that belong in the analysis, not obstacles to thinking clearly about it.

It is worth speaking to a mortgage broker and a financial adviser before making a final decision if your situation involves a large mortgage, significant equity, or complex financial circumstances. The cost of an hour of professional advice is small relative to the financial significance of the decision.

Final Thoughts

The rent vs sell decision does not have a universal right answer. It has a right answer for your property, your mortgage, your financial position, and your plans for what comes after the trip. The families who get it wrong are almost always the ones who didn’t run the numbers properly in the first place.

Work through the net rental income calculation honestly. Have the mortgage conversation before you assume renting is possible. And if the margin is thin, consider seriously whether releasing your equity and letting it work harder elsewhere makes more financial sense than the default assumption.

Related articles:

Does Long-Term Travel Affect Your UK Tax Residency?

How Much Do You Need to Save Before Long-Term Family Travel?

How To Set Up Your Finances Before Long-Term Travel: A UK Family’s Checklist