Mortgage Arrears Issues: Tell the FSA Consumer Panel your views

BOBTHEBUILDER_3

I Had Developed A Bad Gambling Problem, And In Such Missed 7 Months Mortgage Payments In Totalling £almost £4000... I Started Going To Ga, And Quit The Evil Game, I Was Ignoring The Letters At First And Stuff Just Built Up And Up, And I Denied Having A Problem, Until My Living With Partner Found A Letter (i Had Managed To Keep It A Secret And Hide It From Her (for Which Im Not Proud Of)).... I Got A Letter From Gamblers Annonymous And Phoned The Bank To Explain My Situation, And Where Very Understanding, Now I Am Making Regular Payment Of £200 Over The Monthly Payment, Which Does Leave Me Having To Work A Second Job Just To Have Some Sort Of Life And Food, But Recently They Sent Me A Letter To Capitilise My Mortgage. Which Means My Payments Drop Right Down To £300 A Month, Im Not Classed As In Arrears, And That I Can Still Pay £300 A Month Over My Mortgage( I.e £150 Less A Month Than Previous) To Get Rid Of The "would Be Arrears," Now My Finances Are Back On Track, Planning On Starting A Family And Enjoying Life................ There Is Hope Just Be Honest With Everyone..............

hanvic

i had an accident and was off work for 7 months, 6 on full pay and then half pay came into force. i was advised after surgery to return to work part time. i contacted northern rock before my income fell to half pay and explained the situation. they allowed me to pay half my mortgage and were very helpful. i am of course accumulating arrears. i put my house on the market and got a very low offer which will clear their mortgage and two thirds of a secured loan with black horse. a relative died and left me an ex council house with obviously no mortgage. northern rock have allowed me to port over a small mortgage on this property to pay off the remainder of the secured loan and some cash to get the house up to standard. my relative was an alcoholic recluse and the house is in a bad state

i found them helpful but firm and even though i am in arrears they have allowed me to carry over the smaller mortgage. of course they are cutting their risk down as this smaller mortgage is about one sixth of the original but it allows me to have somewhere to live that i can afford.

val1962

Hi, i was made redundant by woolworths in january. I took out an insurance policy when i took my mortgage out (interest only) but they dont pay first 30 days then they pay a month in arrears i have just been paid (31/3/09) for mortgage should of been paid 09/03/09 and therefore i just cannot afford to pay my mortgage for March (28th ) i have cancelled direct debit and written to Abbey asking if i can have a months holiday , or add it to end of term as i really dont want my credit affected, but they dont do this on interest only. Its not fair as i took insurance out to cover me but it just took so long to get it and i just cant afford one month, thats all. I hopefully am starting work , caring for people in their homes in the next couple of weeks but...

Please help, how can i find £400 to pay march's mortgage???
I am divorced with two children too aged 19 and 10, 19 year old out of work too.


Thanks

gazhus

I am with SPML and i am in the process of having my house repossessed. I fell behind with my payments originally a few years ago as they kept charging me money for house insurance which i had elsewhere. I was only putting in money for the mortgage not the extra they were charging. This meant every time they tried to claim the money i would get a bank charge plus SMPL would charge me £35 for not meeting the payments. After many discussions they finally agreed i was insured elsewhere and started to take the proper money. Anyway i was taken to court and agreed to pay my mortgage payment plus £50 to clear the arrears. I then lost my job and spoke to them to defer the payments but they would not agree. Thus i missed 4 payments and now they have decided to repossess the house. I have offered to pay them the normal monthly plus £100 with a lump sum of £800. They keep saying offer a proposal which they wont accept. I do not want my house to be repossessed but i cant pay the full amount of arrears which totals about £3700 and every month they add extra so im fighting a losing battle. Is there any one i can go for help as i think SMPL are being unfair.

Balluboy

I have just over £2000 in arrears. I am back on regular payments but do not have surplus to pay off arrears. ME charge me £30 per month for arrears. £35 every so often when they decide to present a DD. £85 for referring account to counsellor - thick as 2 short planks from what I have heard. Staff: ill-informed, untrained, incompetent. No continuity with communication. Never respond to any written communication and if pushed, respond on the phone (later deny everything) and then when someone has nothing else to do press a few buttons, out come a few letters, posted, job done for the day. If they hit the target well and good if not, refer to complaints dept who blame the computer, nubi staff and apologise - that is until next time. On the other hand Bank of Scotland is wonderful and RBS a bunch of incomptent, arrogant !"£$"£^%4.

dette_2

Hi,
I think we have been treated badly by GE Money, But I would appreciate your views.
In June 2007, My husband lost his job. This resulted in us unfortunatley going in to 2 months arrears with our mortgage. We made arrangements to pay back extra each month. We did this for quite a few months but were finding it impossible to manage. By November 2007 we were in such a bad position financially and realised we would be forced to go bankrupt. I telephoned GE money to explain this and told them it was our only option, but we did not want to loose our home. We continued to pay all we could, but we also had to raise funds for the bankruptcy.
We were eventually declared bankrupt on 18 January 2008.
A few days later we received a letter from GE money to inform us they were going to apply for repossession, because we had broke the agreement to pay the arrears. We intended to carry on paying the arrears as soon as possible. At this time we were making our full mortgage payment each month but were not in the position at that time to pay the arrears. We had at this time paid half the arrears.
We then received the Court Order for repossession and a court date in March.
My husband had started a new job in January. I had been signed off work with severe depression and anxiety.
I filled in the response to the Court Order online and explained to the court everything that had happened and why I thought that GE money were in the wrong to apply for repossession.
On the saturday morning, before the court case was due on the monday, we received a letter from GE Money saying they had withdrawn the Order.
Knowing a little about how the court works and because we had not received any notification from the courts I thought it would be safer to still go to court, even though GE Money had told us we no longer had to appear in court.
My husband attended the court and was told by the Judge that he was right to still turn up as they had only received a fax from GE Money on the friday afternoon and had not had enough time to notify us.
The Court order was withdrawn but GE Money still added the Court fees to our balance for us to pay.
By august 2008, GE Money agreed to capitalise the remaining arrears of around £600. Up until then we had also been paying extra interest and £40 charges every month. It was such a relief to now be paying the agreed monthly mortgage payment each month on the 8th.
UNTIL.......

November 2008 GE Money did not claim the November 8th direct debit. My husband rang them on monday 10th to ask them why they had not applied for the d/d. He was told it was an error on their part.
We then received a letter dated 10 November 2008 saying our next payment was due on 31st December 2008.
As far as my husband was concerned they were going to add the November payment on to the balance.
In December we received a phone call and letter saying that we were in arrears due to the November payment not being paid! AND they started to add the £40 fee on and extra interest AGAIN.
I wrote to them to query this and it was sent to the complaints department, who in time replied and told us we had misunderstood and we needed to pay November's payment. We were not trying to avoid paying the installment, but as it was their error in the first place, they should take some responsibility. Why would we ever want to be in that awful situation again, paying more fees and the balance getting higher, after all the time it had taken us to get back on track.
To cut a very long story short, GE money have continued to add charges and constantly ring and harass us about the arrears, although we were still waiting for a reply regarding the matter.
Their final response is that they are right and we are wrong!
This is not the outcome you expect from a responsible company and I intend to take this to the Financial Ombudsman.
I would appreciate any advise or help regarding this awful mess.
Thank you.

Roy_Boy

Back again.

Standard Variable Rates as of 6th April 2009:

Halifax 3.5%
Cheltenham & Gloucester 2.5%
Abbey 4.69%
Standard Life Bank 5.34%

Bank of England Base Rate 0.5%

London Inter Bank Offer Rate 1.625%

Go figure.....

(Halifax and C&G are both part of the Lloyds Banking Group.)

uk2000steve

Can anyone help?
I have been un-employed since 01st Oct 08 and therefore I am coming up to 6 months in arrears.
To be fair my mortgage lender - "Future Mortgages" have been pretty good up until now.

I have ensured I communicated every 3-4 weeks even if i had no good news to report.
I wrote to them after about 4 months asking about the:
"period freeze"
"extending the mortgage to reduce the amount"
"interest only"

They did not respond to this, then out of the blue I got a solicitors letters advising me to complete a financial statement and come back to them with options to repay the mortgage arrears etc.

I wrote to them advising that I was seeing the CAB and we would be preparing a financial statement.

The solicitors did acknowledged this. Then less than 2 weeks after their acknowledgement they served me with a "Court Summons" due on 28th April 09 to start repossession proceedings.

I spoke to the solicitors who rang me a few days later and advised them of the situation once again. I also said that as I only had temporary work I could only pay about £500 per month going forward. They rejected this and said I had to pay the full-amount going forward and the arrears could be discussed at a later date.

The CAB also rang for me without any joy to put my proposal, but to no avail.

I feel they are not prepared to listen or assist in allowing me to make much smaller payments at this stage.
I could be wrong, but they seem intend on pushing for repossession unless i pay the £1200 per month going forward.

Truthfully if i put in a few extra hours here and there I could probably get to around 50% of the monthly mortgage. Is this not a reasonable offer for them to accept for a limitwed period of time.

I probably have at least £50k equity in the house, I'm only 44 and when I get back to work I will certainly be able to pay the monthly mortgage plus small amounts to reduce the arrears.

You earliest attention and advice is appreciated.

Yours hopefully

Steve Whittaker

QueensferryRoss

I am with RBS for my mortgage. Held jointly with ex-girlfriend

We split up in mid 2007 when we were on a fixed rate. The property then went up for sale in a saturated local market with falling prices.

The fixed rate ended in Nov 2007, RBS did not write until 14 days before the next payment, which was going from £424 to £697.

Innediately I called and agreed to change to interest only on a capped rate, costing a fee of £795 but putting the monthly payment down to £430 which made sense giving that property up for sale.

Ex, who worked for RBS either left or was sacked and moved abroad. Bank took a month and three phone calls to get me the papers out for the capped rate, meanwhile a payment of £697 was missed as ex didnt credit the bills account with enough or in time.

I continued to pay as much as I could but by the time mortgage eventually got changed over in Feb 2008 (they managed to lose papers twice between their own offices and still had the cheek to charge the arrangement fee, which later I found they charged twice when each set of papers turned up, one set two months after they were signed!) there were arrears of c.£600-£700.

I expected the interest adjustment to the agreed backdate in November would sort that out, but for some reason it didnt (I got £100 compensation for my complaints about it) and the arrears remained but staff there advised not to worry, just pay the mortgage for 6 months and we'll roll it over. Great I thought.

I continued to pay my share direct to mortgage as was ex. Ex stopped paying her share, and no one from the bank got in contact for months and months until they hit us with a demand for the full amount or legal action would be taken.

I called them and explained situation, they had no note of me and ex splitting, even though they had been told twice.

I offered to discuss a repayment plan for the arrears myself (monthly payment well down now due to base rate) but they refused advising they couldnt discuss it as it was in litigation.

Their solicitors were more sympathetic and suggested as property was already for sale we go down the bank's assisted sale route. After much to-ing and fro-ing with forms and power of attourneys we got the assisted sale scheme forms signed and I awaited progress.

I then learned that the bank slapped a court order for the ex's personal loans, credit card and overdraft against the property. These were previously all unsecured debts.

I was planning to use my net sale proceeds share for clearing my own feet and freeing up my monthly budget however this situation leaves me facing being homeless and ultimately unable to afford renting in my local area due to the credit commitments I have.

Anyway, two surveyors came out as did a local estate agent on behalf of the bank (remember all the while the house is for sale anyway via own estate agent) who thought the whole episode was a shambles.

When I got marketing price through from them and found it so low I called RBS to complain and ultimately ended up agreeing a repayment plan with them as the litigation had ended !

However RBS failed to set up the direct debtit for this in time, didnt send me confirmation in writing as promised of the repayment plan and also managed to send me a letter saying their estate agent has not heard from me on the marketing of the property they had removed me from the scheme (which I never wanted to use in the first place) and that they were starting reposession proceedings !

That letter arrived on a Friday so after a weekend of worrying I got hold of the collections guys and they explained it was an error, checked my direct debit details and agreed to send out the confirmation letter again (it was originally sent to the old address, where we had moved from 4 years previously!).

A week later, still no direct debit set up on my account (manual payment this month) and still no confirmation letter of payment plan.

Anyone from the FSA on this thread help me put together a complaint while keeping them onside so they dont take any more rash or stupid action ?

Another point - they have never mentioned or told me about the court order value being quoted in a letter to the joint solicitor (who asks for the balance of mortgage periodically) and still send me mini mortgage statements for the actual mortgage amount, no mention of court order amount !

Marlene_Blake

HELP

My mortgage lender had today sent me repossession papers. I am 5 months in arrears and 4 month of this is due to waiting period for the DWP Mortgate Interest Scheme (13 weeks + 4 week). I am now in receipt to the DWP scheme, but because I am not be able to pay in full, they say they are going for suspended possession ( these papers does not memtion suspended possession). I have made then an offer which have not yet accept.

I have kept them inform since I close my business in January 09. I had a repayment mortgage which I have had difficulty paying since early 08. My lender did not inform me that I could change to interest only. I had this information from a friend. My lender then charge me £50 to change in January 09.