Kensington and Mortgage Arrears Capitalisation

Hi,

Its been a while since I last posted but severeal months ago I posted about my situation with Kensington Mortgage Company. To cut a long story short, I am just airing my experience with them to help give a bit of hope to people in the same boat.

Basically, we got in arrears with Kensington and it amounted to about 6 months worth in total over a year (£6000). They took us to court and got a suspended posession order. I attended the court and made an arrangement to clear the arears over 48 months with their solicitor just before we went into see the judge. This involved paying our normal monthly payment plus an agreed £170 per month towards the arrears.

So... we've been paying this overpayment and the monthly amount ever since and had just accepted that we'd be paying this amount every month for 4 years. But Kensington phoned us the other day, offering to turn the arrears into capital - called arrears capitalisation, thus freeing us of the monthly over payment and returning our account back to normal status. They also said they would contact the credit reference agancies and notify them that there were no more arrears on the account. Also as would effectively not be in arrears we wouldn't have to pay their £50 per month arrears fee too.

This is excellent news and we're very happy with it. Obviously, the arrears technically still exist as they have simply been added to our capital balance, so we still owe the months we missed but the main thing is that, our credit file will be put back from a '6' to a '0' and we are no longer under a suspended posession order.... and are better off a month.

What I'm trying to say, to help others is that....keep to your end of the deal, if you can, at all costs (we had to sell things some months to get the money together) and these companies are not as bad as they're assumed to be. Kensington are a real bad company to be on the wrong side of, don't get me wrong, and we've had loads of trouble finding the money every month, but we kept paying for more than 6 months straight and Kensington have now ended up helping us. They'll still get their money one way or another, but at least this way we're better off. I know they've really done it to make their arrears accounts look less but, so what!?

Hope this experience helps anyone else in a similar position. The woman at Kensington said that all people under suspended orders with them, who kept to their agreement for 6 months or more, were eligable for having their arrears capitalised. Maybe its worth you trying your mortgage company if you are in a similar position to this. At least it gets your credit rating back on track and we've had a feeling of relief knowing that we aren't under a suspended order anymore.

If you've paid 6 months or more, like us, under similar circumstances...its worth trying them to do the same....

Good luck.