what are our options....

dd9785

This is complicated but here goes.....my husband has a mortgage with his father for 68.000 currently with Santander. Husbands father is now 76years old and is only on the mortgage as a name sake, my husband pays the mortgage and wanted to take father off the mortgage (with his consent) and put me (the wife) on. Once this was done we wanted to take out a further advance on the mortgage of 25.000 for debt consilidation but santander have said that becuase my husband doesn't live in the property we are unable to do this, we are unable to get an unsecured loan for 25000 and we can't get a secured loan because we don't live in the house that is mortgaged.
We currently have 4 credit cards Nat West, Virgin, Paypal and Barclaycard, all four are now out of their interest free period so we are being wacked, total amount is 16,500, we also have a car loan which is costing us 200 pcm which we wanted to include in the consilidation.
We have approached a few building societys about the possibility of remortgaging and changing to another company but again have hit a wall as we don't reside in the property.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE.....ANY ADVICE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Tixy

Hi

I think all mortgage lenders would take the same view. That said turning unsecured debt into debt secured on the house is rarely a good idea anyway.

The other issue is that with consolidation whilst you pay a lower amount and a lower APR because you pay the debt for so much longer you can pay thousands more in interest. Additionally consoliation doesn't actually address the cause of the debt in the first place, which is spending more than you earn.

It sounds like your best option for the time being would be to write out a detailed budget (or statement of affairs) and look at each item to see where you can save money or cut back so that you have more money for debt repayments each month.

This is a good calculator to do this - http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

If you post the results on here people can probably help with money savings ideas.

WASHER

welcome to MSE and the debt free board.

Consolidation of debts especially when making unsecured debts into secured debts is very rarely recommended. You will also repay these debts for the term of the mortgage and it could end up costing you a fortune in interest, not to mention making your home more at risk if you or husband income drops.

Personally I would speak to CCCS or Payplan, a debt charity who will advise you .

In the meantime, I would recommend you post an SOA (incomings and outgoings) and the peeps on this board will see if they can reduce your outgoings.

Act today, make a phone call or visit the CCCS website, it could be the best thing you have done in a while.

WASHER.x.