New house with Bad Credit History - Pls Help

nc35

Hi All

Well I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

I have just bought a house (completed last week) and it appears that the previous owner was in a real financial state.

We have only just managed to get the Gas & Electricity reconnected. Gas meter had been removed and the 100amp fuse removed from the gas meter, by special warrant.

Neighbours have told us that bailiffs regularly come round too.

No idea where the old owner lives, once again neighbours have told us that they think she lives in a caravan somewhere. She left the property last Christmas!!!

Can someone please advise me what I should do? Don't want the new home to kill my good credit rating. And what would I need to do to stop the bailiffs coming round?

Thanking you all in anticipation

sooz

Getting the gas & electricity back on will have been the hardest things you'll have to do.

It's easy from now

Return all letters to anyone you don't know to sender.

Write on them, RTS & put them back in the post box.

Keep doing this.

In some cases I've known bailiffs to send open letters, addressed to the debtor, but with a note for any occupant to read it. If you get one, call them & put them right, that the debtor no longer lives there, & you moved in on x date. Ask them to check the land registry, & update their records.

Should a bailiff come to the door, show them your id. They will be very polite once they realise that you are not the person they are after.

nc35

Wow - that puts my mind at ease.
And thank you for the quick reply.

Thought I would have to go to the courts etc...

Had to speak to complaints to get the heat and light sorted with NPower. They needed a letter from my solicitor to say we had completed and I was the new owner. lol

Still not in the new home properly. Need a gas engineer to come round. The engineer (use the term loosely) who fitted the new gas meter didn't even knock on the door to say he had been. Therefore system has not been purged of air and nothing gas works.

At least I have electricity

sooz

Don't worry about your credit rating either. It will be fine, unless you find the lady in her caravan, & marry her

G_M

Bad credit records apply to the individual, not the property. Your own record will not be affected.

You may be hassled for a while by final demands, court letters and even, I'm afraid, bailifffs knocking on the door.

However they will be looking for the previous owner, not you.

Make copies of your title deeds showing you now own the house, and your passport to prove ID, and keep these near the front door. If when you get a knock on the door, show them to the debt-collector/bailiff to prove a) who you are (or rather who you are NOT!) and b) that you now own the house.

They will go away.

TrickyDicky101

This happened to us when we moved house 5 years ago - the previous owner (who had moved abroad) left many debts (although the largest was only about £4.5k). We did open all the mail we received for the previous owner (and did contact the owner of the £4.5k debt). We had a bailiff turn up one night but he was very polite when he realised we weren't the previous owner and he said he would arrange for the records to be updated so most of the mail ceased.

nc35

sooz wrote: »

Don't worry about your credit rating either. It will be fine, unless you find the lady in her caravan, & marry her

:rotfl:

Think I will have more than a credit rating to worry about.

On getting out of hospital when the current better half finds out, I think the police would like a quite word (as well as some of the soap writers), possibly an acting career on Emmerdale. Sorry getting carried away now.

Did make me laugh though

Ankatden

Make sure you get yourself on the Electoral register as soon as you move in as then at least you are in the system for credit check companies and also remove anybody else who was previously registered there.

mrcol1000

Just return all the mail. We brought a reprossessed house and get mail. Previous rented properties we had baliffs turn up. They are nice polite people and we gave them the detials of the landlord to chase up to see if there was a forwarding address and we never heard from them again.
NPower however....... They refused to take no for an answer. They were chasing a tenant that lived at the property two tenants back! We provided our tenancy agreement to prove we had moved in. The letting agent faxed them proof. They simply changed the demand to "The Occupier". We regularly had people turn up leaving notes saying a court order was to be obtained to disconnect the electricity. In the end we had to make a formal complaint which took 6 months to sort out and only when we threatened them with referral to the regulator. Although we did charge them for the phone calls and letters and got £50 out of them.