Inheriting Properties with Buy to Let Mortgages

My father recently passed away leaving 11 properties, all with mortgages with an average of around 85% remaining to pay. My siblings and I have little to no knowledge of this area. 

A couple of the properties mortgages are up in 2016, which at that time, as understand it, will need to either be paid off or transferred into new ownership and new mortgages issued. The solicitor believes that the mortgages are likely to now be frozen for 6 months after which time you have around 2 years before the mortgage companies like to see the properties transferred into the beneficiaries names, new mortgages issued or sold and mortgages repaid. We are currently deciding whether we would like to keep them and earn an income from them or whether they should be sold. We’re all leaning towards keeping them, is there a chance we might be forced to sell by the mortgage company? Do you have any information you could provide on how this process works?

The lender obviously has the option to allow the beneficiaries to take on the loan, but how does this normally work – would they have to apply as you do normally for a mortgage? Is there a better way to do it? I presume the income from the individuals and the income from the properties would be taken into consideration, would it be better if there are more people jointly applying, or in this incidence does it not matter? There’s also the decision about whether we keep them jointly (possibley in a LTD company) or split them up between ourselves

Anyway, a lot of questions that we do not have the answers to at the moment.

If you have any experience in this area and are able to shed any light it would greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

David Pearson