Advice please negative equity deed of postponement

caroline34

thanks so much happy broker for the advice on valuations.

went on the web site have done a bit of research and am going to challenge the valuation at Abbey

thanks again for the constructive advice

zooplaguy

Hi. I work for Zoopla! and I wanted to introduce myself, firstly to say thank you for your comments, and help clarify some of the points raised in this thread.

As you probably know, our site includes all the Land Registry sold price data that you can find on other sites, and also free home value estimates based on our algorithm (secret formula).

The algorithm takes into account quite a few variables, an important one being the last sale price of a house, but we also factor in other things like comparable local house sales and market trends.

Zoopla! is a new site, and we believe our estimates are a good starting point, but some are definitely not yet as accurate as we would like. For example, neighbouring or similar properties may have different valuations if improvements have been made to a property, or buyers have negotiated discounts with sellers that we don’t know about. The more information you add to the site for your property and local area the better the valuations will become.

All the feedback we get via forums like this are invaluable to us, and we hope you continue to share your thoughts with us.

www.zoopla.co.uk

Conrad

Zoopla you just gave me double the price mine is worth - what a joke.

So many unclear input options.
What if it's a nice property but has some negatives such as near a busy road?

It's way too blunt to be of any meaningful use

Gated - what does this mean. I have some wooden gates, but we aren't talking big wrought iron country estate style!

Conrad

And also Zoopla, some other annoyances;

You ask about parking, - 'garage OR off street', well how about both!! Duhh

silvercar

I actually like zoopla!

Use it for what it is - a tool amongst others rather than an precise and accurate predictor of your exact property value.

I know the algorithm must be a closely guarded secret, but round my way quite a few houses have been bought in a run down state, improved and extended or flattened and rebuilt and then sold. The increase in Land registry data is partly due to house price inflation and partly due to improvements. Does zoopla have an measure of this?

zooplaguy

Hi Conrad,

I’d like to address some of your points if I may. The estimates published our on website are our opinion are our opinion of the current value on any given day based on data that is publicly available. These estimates are constantly refined using the most recent data available and updated regularly based on data we receive from both public sources and users.

That our valuation of a property is double the owner’s estimate is unusual, and of concern to us. If any data on our website is incorrect please let us know any we’ll investigate, [I’m happy if you want to contact me directly and I’ll look into it]. Alternatively you can improve the accuracy of our estimate by selecting ‘Refine estimate’ link under the Zoopla! Estimate, and let us know via our ‘Estimate feedback’ form if you still don’t agree with the estimate.

‘Busy road’ – our estimates take into account last sold prices, and recently sold prices of properties in an area. If the state of the road has influenced those prices they will have a bearing on our valuations also.

‘Gated/Parking’ – thank you for these comments. We realise that we may be able to improve some of the definitions on our website and we will take your comments into account.

Our site is still in ‘beta’ so we welcome any feedback. Our goal is to give transparency to the property market, and, as with any community website, information and feedback you provide helps us improve our tools and services.

doogle34

Hi Caroline 34
I wish i could say to you, that getting a deed of postponement is straightforward and pretty easy to get, but unfortunately its not.
:mad:
Back in March of this year our fixed rate mortgage came to an end of its two year term and it was going to go on standard variable rate, so payments would increase from £986 to £1497 per month because of the mortgage rate being so good when we took it out in 2006 this was the condtition and that we had to shop around for a new mortgage deal, when it came to an end which natrually is what we would do. so did it in plenty of time went to our mortgage adviser we had no problems with our credit history as we had never missed any payments on anything, paid all our bills on time and had a mortgage for over 14 yrs.

Our mortgage adviser got us a fantastic mortgage offer this was to have additional borrowing so we could continue the renovation works to our property and it was only going to cost us an extra £50 a month on our mortgage payments ,also it was over a longer fixed rate term then before which was great as we didn't plan on selling, so the longer the fixed rate the better for us,we were very pleased with this mortgage offer so we went a head with it.

We paid out valuation fees and arrangement fees out of our savings to keep the rate down and then we were just at the final stages, our solicitor had to get the deed of postponement which we had never heard of from our 2nd charge (Endeavour personal finance) and the reply was NO they would not give it to us, their reason because of the credit crunch had hit the country & the country was in a bit of a state,their lending criteria had changed and they were no longer lending and they had capped their LTV to no more than 80% which didn't effect us anyway as there was plenty of equity in our property.

We just couldn't believe it, we had this fantastic mortgage offer that was going to be less than what our SVR was going to be, but they just did not care at all & their whole atittude was appauling. I asked them what it would take to let us re-mortage their reply was a like for like re-mortgage or any additional borrowing had to go to them, but we did not want to pay this 2nd charge off ,we had taken it out over a term, we had been paying it for years and wanted to continue paying it untill it was finished. Because of endeavour demands that mortgage offer was thrown out,and also was a lot of other mortgage offers that our mortage adviser managed to get just because of Endeavour demands. This made us so angry and so upsetting how this particular company were able to have the power over us to re-mortage and we felt they were loving putting us through complete misery, because endeavour was taking so long, months had gone by and we were now on our SVR paying that extra money on our mortage every month which seemed absolutely crazy when we had perfectly good mortage offer.

After numerous phone calls to Endeavour we wanted to know what it would take for them to give us that stupid bit of paper (deed of postponement) as thats all it is, for us to re-mortage they said they would allow a exact like for like i said this would still incur additional borrowing as our redemption fiqure was slightly more not by much but it was not exact and also because we had wasted money on valations and fees on previous mortgage offers there was no more money left in our savings to pay out solicitor fees,arangement fees,mortgage broker fees etc,etc.EPF said they appreciated there would be extra costs due to solicitor fees etc and they would allow this, our mortage adviser got us another mortage deal this was going to increase our mortgage payments by an extra £250 per month but this was better than our current SVR and fixed again every thing in place went to EPF for that DOP they turned round and said No again because we were going over our exact like for like figure by £4000 to pay fees,but i said to them that i had already explained this to them and they said this would be ok & they would allow it.Both our mortgage adviser & solicitor could not believe this companys attitude in all the years they had been dealing in their professions they had never ever come across a company behaving in this manner.

We ended up paying EPF that £4000 so they would allow us to re-mortage and finally in June of this year our new mortgage offer went through but not with out the sheer hard work from ourselves,the mortgage adviser and solicitor.

This is one of the most sressful things we have ever had to go through and all over a piece of paper what makes my blood boil is before taking out this secured loan with this company i stressed that we had to re-mortage in 2008 would this be a problem and their reply was No, not at all, never mentioned once, that you had to get this DOP which i think i vital information because without it you cannot re-mortgage if you have a secured loan on your property.If they had mentioned this to us we would of never taken out this loan thats for sure.

I have felt so angry about how this company has treated us i have spoken & written to the FO,FSA. even the bank of England,i have even written to 10 downing street about this but because secured loans are not governed by any one they can get away with this, which i feel is absolutely crazy. Mortgages,credit cards,unsecured loans etc are all governed but secured loans are not, why is this, as lets face it they lend out as much as a mortgage, something needs to be done about this DOP as i expect it has effected a lot of peoples lives and possibly could be reasons for repossions i don't no, could be.

So if anybody from the goverment happens to read this post,please take note and do something about this DOP and put something in place to govern these companies else they are going to ruin many more peoples lives unless something is done.Subsquently we have learnt that EPF have gone bust and all the staff have been made redundant maybe this was their reasons for their attitude towards us, if it was its a pretty lousy one.

Good luck caroline hope you have more luck then we did, try not to worry as what will be,will be and there is nothing you can do to change this,unless the goverment steps in & changes the way DOP is dealt with by these companys.Enjoy your home and your family and take no notice of these people who persecute you for taking the loan out ,everybody has their reasons and lets face it nobody is persecuting the banks or lending companys when they were dishing out these loans in the first place with pressurised sales so they could hit their targets and get their big fat bonus at the end of the month,their alright jack, but now the credit crunch has hit the country the s..t has hit the fan so to speak & banks and lending companies are trying to claw back all that money they dished out in the first place as they are now so desparate perhaps they should of thought about this after all isn't this what we go to banks for (financial advice) yeh right !

Good luck every one needing a DOP ! especially those people who need to get a DOP from EPF tell us your story.

Toughluck

My experience is when people have secured loans with EPF and they are looking to do a DOP I basically just bin the case. They have told that they would "look" at a case once the survey had been carried out, an offer in place and a cheque for them to look at it, and then they may not even agree it.

I would only DOP Welcome finance (the gernerally do it at a drop of a hat) at a last resort and even that company have tightened up on the lending policy over the past 9 months and I thought I would never have seen that in my lifetime!!

Hindsight is wonderful, maybe you should have taken further lending off your current lender I don't know but secured loans can have a big impact on people "as we have found out from the above post".

caroline34

Hi Everyone

SORRY THIS IS A BIT LONG WINDED .... PLEASE HELP ME !!!!


Well still no good news on the mortgage, need some advice on valuations because I think things have not been done correctly ....

After the original valuation in June I had to do all the calling to get the information from our advisor about the valuation due to the fact that the advisor didnt bother to call us and inform us what the value was. For at least 3 weeks after ... We said we wanted to challenge the value and he suggested we get three independent quotes .... We got our own values done with 3 estate agents ..... and yes before you say I know agents over price!!!! valuer quoted £150 000 estate agents were between £165 000 - £170 000(when we took out the secure loan this time last year house was valued at £185000) .

We didnt hear from the Advisor at the bank till this Tuesday as he went on holiday and hadnt handed our case onto anyone else at the bank. Obviously we cant have the deal we wanted as our LTV is too low we have been offered another deal costing us more than £100 a month extra than we are paying now but we have to pay all the fees up front. No savings, baby on the way in 2 months, I am on Maternity leave as of this week and have been off sick with all the stress and some serious problems with the pregnancy. So as you can imagine all is not well.

Waiting to hear if the bank can help us with the fees ... advisor said he will ask his manager. We are still waiting to hear, advisor assured us we would hear today but I rang and he is on holiday again.

In relation to valuation .... we got a copy of the valuation on tuesday and there was a problem with the valuation. The information the valuer stated was incorrect. ie he said we had no parking when we did. We have our own private drive way for 2 cars. As we live on a main road as you can imagine it is a luxury.

Rang mortgage man at bank he had followed it up and we have been told by Head Office today that due to fact that the valuer didnt know this on the day (even though I told him about it on the day of the value) of the valuation and as the house prices have dropped again since the value at the end of June our value is still £150 000 !!!!

Can anyone give us any advice on how to pursuit this ? is this legal? or legal but plain unethical? Any valuers or mortgage people out there please help me ...
Should we try and find another deal? our deal with Northern Rock ends on 1st September when our payments go up by £200.

arkie

If First plus agree to a DOP, make sure you have checked with the Abbey that they are happy with this !!!