Dr. Monzer Kahf, Scholar in Islamic Economics & Financial Expert, states the following: “First of all, I would like to refer to two points. The first is the opinion of the First Fiqh Conference in the US and Canada, held in Detroit, Nov. 1999. Its summary is that for people who live in non-Muslim countries and are in need to buy a residence because of difficulty in finding suitable rentable, convenient schooling, size of family, etc., and cannot afford cash payment, it is permissible to recourse to mortgage if there was no other alternative.
Let us suppose a person bought a residence under this Fiqh opinion and later the circumstance changed and the residence ended up rented. What does this person do? Applying the rules of Shari’ah, you should make all reasonable effort to get rid of this contract as soon as possible without sacrificing your equity in the property and this is exactly what you tried to do.
Having said this, I see one thing that still can be done if one thinks are not going to be in need for the apartment to use it as a residence once more in the future: to sell the property as soon as possible again without rushing into a sale that makes you loose on its market value.
Here, where the second point comes. There is a general rule of Shari’ah that whenever action is needed to be done, we are required to do it as much as we can with only bearable cost because we are called on to protect our five major things: life, religion, mind, posterity and property.
Based on this, if one thinks they are going to need it again for residence the temporary rental does not affect them. This means that until one makes the right decision on this apartment, they need to feel comfortable with their own conscious as long as they are trying to get rid of the Riba as much as they can.”