u/Content_Lack7267

Hey Reddit, me and my partner (both 30yo) are looking at potentially taking a work sabbatical either to the States or mainland Europe for a year (at the least maybe, longer). My company has offices worldwide which does allow for mobility without changing jobs for myself. We do not yet have kids and so we feel this sort of experience will only get harder the older we get.

Our main point of confusion is what to do with our new-build house which we bought 5 years ago. 3 bedroom house in Cockfosters, North London (Zone 5).

As I see it we have the following options..

1. Sell the house (we potentially make some gains on the purchase price, not much given the lacklustre market) but then we would face the sting of another stamp duty charge when we return i.e. ~35k on a 900k 3 bedroom house.
2. Formally rent the house out (ideally to a trusted friend but this is unlikely so would have to go through a professional management agent). If anyone has experience on this in recent years that'd be super insightful. Quick check seems to suggest we would be able to get a Consent to Let no problem. May make ~2.6k a month on the property based on quick checks. Would require all the documentation that goes with preparing a house for the rental market, but shouldn't require much by way of upgrades since its a new house.
3. Try and strike up a house swapping agreement with someone in, say, New York (if that's where we decide to go). Is this kind of thing likely or even feasible for a longer term agreement?
4. Try and rent out for short term lets (<3 months) periodically on Airbnb. This would require a lot of work but seems it may swerve a lot of the costs otherwise incurred by renting, but with its own drawbacks of higher upkeep and irregular funds coming in. While our local area and quick transport into London makes Cockfosters/Barnet very liveable for us, a quick scan on airbnb shows there isn't much in the local area and I wonder if this is for good reason.
5. Leave the house empty. Headache free of course but then we bare the brunt of our full mortgage cost of around ~2.1k per month.

Any thoughts or advice would really help give us some clarity

Thanks!