charge on property

jeanette251978

This has got me worrying BIG time. i start a DMP with the cccs on 1st november and when i had my last meeting last week this wasnt mentioned so i dont know if its applicable to us, our debt is greater than the equity in our home. we owe £22000 to lots of different creditors and the equity in our home is about £15000... also all but 2 debts are in my name and not my other halfs, how do u stand with that with regards to being made to sell up, surely if my other half owns 1/2 the house he can say no to the sale if its one of my creditors that applies for a charging order and forces sale ???

Wonder_Girl

It is VERY rare for a judge to grant an order of sale, the creditor would have to provide a VERY good reason for this, i.e. fraud or the fact you owned several properties.

Although Charging Orders have become very popular with creditors this is pretty much the end of the line for them, you will continue to pay the debt off each month with the hope that when you do sell your property the debt will be reduced id not cleared already.

Please don’t start thinking you are going to lose your house, this is extremely rare and almost unheard of. So long as you keep up you mortgage payments your house is at very little risk.

WG xx

jeanette251978

Wonder_Girl wrote:

It is VERY rare for a judge to grant an order of sale, the creditor would have to provide a VERY good reason for this, i.e. fraud or the fact you owned several properties.

Although Charging Orders have become very popular with creditors this is pretty much the end of the line for them, you will continue to pay the debt off each month with the hope that when you do sell your property the debt will be reduced id not cleared already.

Please don’t start thinking you are going to lose your house, this is extremely rare and almost unheard of. So long as you keep up you mortgage payments your house is at very little risk.

WG xx

THANK YOU SO MUCH

you dont know how much you have put a smile back on my face, ive been holding back the tears for the past hour or so at the thought of loosing our home. I take responsibility for the debt we have accrued and have done my upmost to keep talking to creditors, sending letters and token payments.. and would find it a real kick in the teeth if they applied to enforce sale and it was granted as i have EVERY intention to pay the money we owe and get out of this mess.

Thanks wonder_girl

laccal

Egg (scumbags) placed a court order on my property for a credit card (approx 10k).
I am with pay plan and still only pay them a set fee. the judge did not set a fee and nor did egg.
This was over a year ago and there was/is no mention of forcing us to sell.

I doubt that any (sane) judge, or creditor would even try and force a sale

Good luck and I know its easier said than done (as I have been exactly where you are now) but do not panic

Xbigman

Charging orders are 99% hot air. I say 99% as there is a small danger that everyone needs to be aware of.

Procedure is;

1. Creditor applies for CCJ. You should ask for it to be held at a court near you. You should go and contest it. Always take any paperwork you have as proof of what you say (always challenge anything inaccurate IE many creditors applying for a CCJ claim you haven't contacted them, if you can prove you did it makes them look bad). Challenge any fees and costs they try to add. Some of these can add up to thousands of pounds and if you have been cooperating you have a good chance of getting them blocked. Take your income/expenditure details and offer the court a payment. The court almost always agrees to this.
My personal opinion is that you should now tell CCCS etc NOT to pay this as you will pay it directly yourself. Do you want to leave the future of your property to a third party?

2. Until last year it was a fact that if you paid a CCJ a charging order was not put on. This is no longer true. Your creditor can apply for a Charging order anyway (sometimes called a hybrid CCJ). It is important to contest this on the grounds you are paying the CCJ (take proof to court) and it is redundent. Some judges are then refusing the CCJ, many are letting it through. Regardless of the outcome it was important that you challenged it.

3. If you continue to pay the CCJ your creditor cannot force a sale. But they may try it on. This is the time to get a solicitor if at all possible. It very, very rarely comes to this.

Notes.
If you debt is above 5000 a charging order is much more likely to be granted. There is also the prospect of the court ordering the court rate of interest to be applied, currently 8%. Take any debt like this very seriously. I'm sorry to say that if you have a debt above 5000 you should worry about it and watch that debt like a hawk. Don't get depressed or stressed out but just be aware it is important that you don't set a foot wrong.
If you have a debt above 3500 then look out for creditors running up the fees and interest on it to get it above 5000.

Finally. Your ultimate defence against repossession, sell it yourself. This is by far preferable to your creditors selling it off on the cheap. Only get pushed into this if all else fails and a repossession hearing date is set. Even then you can get the court to give you time to sell.
Regards



X

carriel_2

Just wanted to offer some support to Ole & jeanette here, I have read this thread with rising panic & am so grateful to Wondergirl for her words.

One of our creditors is applying for a charging order (not a CCJ) & we were advised by CCCS that its extremely unlikely that they would try to force a sale, they are just doing it so that they will have the debt repaid eventually (even though we are making reasonable monthly payments anyway) they have given us 21 days to try to find £2700 or they are applying for a charging order.

At this point we think it's likely to be just scare tactics to get us to pay them back quickly, as we've been told that they are unlikely to issue a charging order for under £5000.

We have managed to make around £1000 so far with selling loads of stuff, carboot, ebay etc & have about 10 days left to make the rest, cannot see it happening though, so we'll have to see what happens next.

Good luck to you both

ole_2

thank you all so much for your replys, i know with your help i will get through this, so a big thank you to you all.:T

Tootsie_Roll

Xbigman wrote:

Charging orders are 99% hot air. I say 99% as there is a small danger that everyone needs to be aware of.

Procedure is;

1. Creditor applies for CCJ. You should ask for it to be held at a court near you. You should go and contest it. Always take any paperwork you have as proof of what you say (always challenge anything inaccurate IE many creditors applying for a CCJ claim you haven't contacted them, if you can prove you did it makes them look bad). Challenge any fees and costs they try to add. Some of these can add up to thousands of pounds and if you have been cooperating you have a good chance of getting them blocked. Take your income/expenditure details and offer the court a payment. The court almost always agrees to this.
My personal opinion is that you should now tell CCCS etc NOT to pay this as you will pay it directly yourself. Do you want to leave the future of your property to a third party?

2. Until last year it was a fact that if you paid a CCJ a charging order was not put on. This is no longer true. Your creditor can apply for a Charging order anyway (sometimes called a hybrid CCJ). It is important to contest this on the grounds you are paying the CCJ (take proof to court) and it is redundent. Some judges are then refusing the CCJ, many are letting it through. Regardless of the outcome it was important that you challenged it.

3. If you continue to pay the CCJ your creditor cannot force a sale. But they may try it on. This is the time to get a solicitor if at all possible. It very, very rarely comes to this.

Notes.
If you debt is above 5000 a charging order is much more likely to be granted. There is also the prospect of the court ordering the court rate of interest to be applied, currently 8%. Take any debt like this very seriously. I'm sorry to say that if you have a debt above 5000 you should worry about it and watch that debt like a hawk. Don't get depressed or stressed out but just be aware it is important that you don't set a foot wrong.
If you have a debt above 3500 then look out for creditors running up the fees and interest on it to get it above 5000.

Finally. Your ultimate defence against repossession, sell it yourself. This is by far preferable to your creditors selling it off on the cheap. Only get pushed into this if all else fails and a repossession hearing date is set. Even then you can get the court to give you time to sell.
Regards



X

I think there is quite a lot of confusion on here regarding charging orders and I certainly don't agree with the 99% hot air statement - if you had worked in the same environments as me in the past and seen how many get sent off to Northampton every week you'd be amazed.

Most dca's/lenders I know in this position would apply for a 'Forthwith' judgement meaning they require the whole balance paid back immediately; unless the account holder can do this and all the paperwork is correct the judge has no option but to grant the charging order - please note there is no option at this stage to start offering payments to hold off the charge and it is entirely possible you are already making payments to them, the judge has no choice. Once the order has been granted THEN is the time to negotiate a reapyment plan which the dca/lender will agree to (assuming it's realistic all round) and subject to those payments being met there is little danger of losing the house. Some dca's will even give an undertaking to the court that they have no wish to force the sale of the house as they genuinely don't want to.

I have been banging on for years about how there is no such thing as an unsecured loan if you are a home owner.

nicecarkeys

I have come across cases where clients have several charging orders against their property and in only one case did the lender try to force a sale. In that instance there was a very large 2nd secured loan with substancial arrears and the judge refused the enforcement of sale on the condition of a small but regular payment to the lender.

Xbigman

There used to be people on this site that would tell you that charging orders could be blocked if a CCJ was paid, even supplying links to the relevent legislation. They were wrong, as has been shown many times by the experience of those on this site.

Now Tootsie is putting the creditors point of view. He's not wrong but it is alarmist.

Charging orders are a way of registering a debt against a property. Nothing more, nothing less. They are scary, stressfull and can be a real pain. They very very rarely result in repossession and ANYONE who makes an effort to pay can block the repossession.

As for northampton, the charging order/CCJ capitol of the universe, unless you live there you should get the hearing moved to a local court so you can attend. If you live there you should just go along and have your say, just don't expect too much sympathy.
Regards



X