Second Charge on Property and Moving...

Silvafox

As promised, here is my update to the situation....

We called Welcome, as I said, and spoke to someone and explained all to them. The person on the other end of the phone hadn't really dealt with this situation before and said he would speak to his sniors and get back to us and was very nice and helpful.

The next day, later on in the afternoon, he rang back stating that they would simply flip the loan to an unsecured loan and immediately apply to have the caution removed from the property! What a result!!! He said that any money we make above and beyond the mortgage balance and all fees etc and pay to Welcome would go into our loan and would simply enable us to get our balance down, albeit £2000 or £8000. The new unsecured loan will simply carry on and they said they would look into trying to lower our payments too depending on how much money we pay into it.

The main thing is that we kept them informed and in the loop. They have told us to tell them whats happeneing at every step and that they were happy with us. So, we're moving (hopefully, if we can sell our house now!).

I hope that anyone else who finds themselves in this situation can get some advice from this thread now too. Thanks all for your advice and comments....


Kind regards....

HelpWhereIcan

:T :T So Glad you got a result :j :j

homer_j_3

Could you pull out the mortgage offer with kensington and type out the early repayment charge wording as I know that some of them are a bit "dodgy" to say the least and I know that they have in the past had intervention with the Ombudsman due to them.

If you have been in arrears, I know that there are people trying to reclaim the charges applied to the account so register and have a look at https://www.consumeractiongroup.com to see if you can do this.

You are currently in a negative equity situation and unfortunately you must give clear title on the property to your buyer and your solicitor will have to confirm that this wil be the case. If they know that you are unable to give clear title then they will not confirm this and thus bring the whole sale to a grinding halt.

You can actually purchase from the land registry a copy of the entries registered against a property. I think its about £3. If you can get hold of this you will be able to see exactly whether welcome have a charge or whether they have registered a caution or whether they used title insurance and have nothing placed against the property.

Silvafox

I'll have a look about for the kensington stuff.

I'm not sure what you are saying about the clear title bit? Welcome are removing the charge off the property and have agreed to carry on as an unsecured loan. Therefore, we are no longer in negative equity as we owe Kensington approximately £157,000 including all arrears and redemption and the house is up for sale at £165,000. So there should be no problems at all should there as we will be giving our buyer clear title? Or am I misunderstanding something?! Hope not?!

Edited to say:

Homer J - I have just looked at your posts on the other site and its interesting reading. At a guess we have been charged that £50 arrears charge about 9 times now....I'll look into it. Thanks.

Edited again - I have found the paperwork, here's what it says:

In Special Conditions it says:
(Cond 673) Clause 17.3 of the General Mortgage Conditions is deleted and replaced with: The early repayment charge (if any) is calculated on the amount of the repayment as follows:

Repayment Date
In the first year following the completion of an advance - 6% of the amount repaid
In the second year following the completion of an advance - 6% of the amount repaid
In the third year following the completion of an advance - 6% of the amount repaid
In the fourth and subsequent years - Interest for the number of days between the date of redemption and the next monthly payment date

NOW in the General Mortgage Conditions booklet that I got off them at the same time says:

17.3 Unless your offer says otherwise, the early repayment charge is calculated on the amount of the repayment as follows:

First year - 5%
Second year - 4%
Third year - 3%

Is this what you wanted off me Homer J?

It basically looks like we would have paid only 4% in redemption but they scrapped 17.3 and rewrote it.

Let me know your thoughts.

EDITED FOR A THIRD TIME!

Just found the letter from the Land Registry about Welcome's charge. It says:

Notice to a registered proprietor of an application to enter a unilateral notice. It basically goes on to say that: 12 Nov 2004 UNILATERAL NOTICE in respect of a charge made between (1) Progressive Fianncial and (2) myself and my partner.

12 Nov 2004 BENEFICIARY: Progressive Financial.

What is a unilaterla notice? I assume that this is the equivalent to a charge? Even if it is though, they have agreed to remove it anyway, leaving us clear to sell our house as we won't be in negative equity anymore.

Thanks!

homer_j_3

Right, I must have missed the part re welcome allowing it to be converted to unsecured so yes you will be selling with clear title (this is a term for seling with no charges registered against the property)

Re the early repayment charges - I think that the wording that was found unacceptable by the ombudsman. Now before I start giving any false hopes, I know that the ombudsman actually has sided with KMC on this a few times and it came a bit of a shock when they had to repay over 10k to a customer because the ombudsman agreed with the customer on this occassion. I know this as I know people closely associated with Kensington.

The argument used is that they are asking for 6% of the amount repaid. Now I know that they mean 6% of the amount repaid upon redemption, however, the argument is that you should only pay 6% of the amount you have repaid against the loan to date so far - i.e 6% of all your mortgage payments.

As I said, its not a guaranteed winner but may be worth looking into and writing to them as a formal complaint and sticking with the view that its your interpretation versus theirs. One customer has been successful and many havent but you will probably have to go to the ombudsman. It doesnt cost you anything.

The general conditions dont mean anything as it states unless your offer states otherwise, which it does.

If you need any more help, just give us a shout.

Silvafox

Thanks Homer J. I appreciate you taking time to comment. I will certainly be looking into the redemption charge and figures. I will be speaking to Kensington on Tuesday. If I find out anything significant then I, as alst time, post my findings up on this thread for others. It'd be the icing on the cake to pay just 6% of actual payments made rather than 6% of the entire amount....although I won't get our hopes up too high, but worth checking out.

Thanks!

Silvafox

Latest update. Welcome have agreed, as stated above, to remove the charge.
I know have a redemption figure off Kensington too and its annoyed me
hugely. The figures are below:

We borrowed: £140,519
We have arrears of £7,042
6% Redemption on original advance: £8,431
The above totals: £155992

Kensington have sent me a redemption figure of: £159,294

That means they have added £3,301 in charges and fees! This has to be daylight robbery surely?! I also requested a statement at the same time and on the statement there is a total of £730 in charges (solicitors fees and
stuff from when they took us to court) and I added up 20 charges of £50 for
being in arrears. They both total £1730 in charges (which is enough!) so
they have then magically added another £1270!! Surely this isn't
legal?

We are moving anyway and can afford to pay the settlement figure but there's no way in the world I'm letting them get away with this. As we are now in a chain to move and can't risk anything upsetting the move, should we just pay the redemption figure and the query the charges later? Is this possible or do we lose some rights by 'accepting' the redemption figure and paying it?

Any advice would be hugely welcome. I want to immediately question their
figures. Do I go to an ombudsmen or a solicitor?

Edited to add: They have taken the 6% of the whole balance too as redemption so that is now £9108 and added £434 in solicitors fees, £145 redemption fee, £137 Sundry Debits.....its a joke.