Firstplus Loan - Help needed please!!!

Teen_the_Drama_Queen

Hi all

My husband and I are in a bit of a predicament (to say the least).

We took out a Firstplus loan back in 2007 (75K loan and £18K ppp). Having had a bad couple of years (redundancy included) we now see the future as bleak and are thinking of selling our house (outstanding mortgage of £154K) and renting in future.

However, upon requesting a settlement figure from Firstplus we now have £86K outstanding. (We cancelled the PPP monthly payment from July this year (2010) as we were trying to cut down on our outgoings).

We think our house would prob fetch around £230K to £235K, so taking into account the o/s mortgage of £154K and the £86K to firstplus we have a shortfall.

We cannot, of course, sell our house as Firstplus has a legal charge on our home and we will not acquire enough to pay off the mortgage and Firstplus too.

Has anyone else been in this situation and if so, do you have any advice please?

(We have a 3 bedroom terrace house and two kids and a dog to support! I was made redundant 2 years ago and could not get a job with a similar income to that which I had previously, so we have, therefore, been trying to exist on £400 per month less for the last 2 years).

We also have credit card debts which I don't even want to think about at present.

All help gratefully received.

Thanks
xxxxxxx

[Deleted User]

have you made any claims on the PPI? if not were you mis-sold?

Movies_in_Running

I don't suppose the £75k was spent on anything you could sell?

caveatvenditor

Perhaps an IVA?

Walter_J

My advice would be very simple;

Stop paying the mortgage and secured loan payments and use the money saved to put down a deposit on a rented property. Use any available credit left on your cards buying food for your family.

Move house and then go bankrupt without warning anyone. The Official Receiver will deal with all your debts and creditors. After a year (at most) you will be entirely debt-free and can concentrate on living your lives within your means.

Visit the excellent bankruptcy forum on this site for more help.

Teen_the_Drama_Queen

Wow, many thanks to all for your prompt replies

Unfortunately, Movies in Running, the Firstplus loan was to change our car, which then had mega probs and we subsequently traded it in and made a huge loss.

Don't know much about an IVA, caveatvenditor, but will certainly look into it, cheers.

And thanks Syrok, I am assuming you are being sarcastic! Which frankly, we don't need at this time, thanks. I would point out that when I was made redundant (after having worked solidly for some 30 years even when the kids were tiny) it did not occur to us to even apply for Jobseekers allowance. When I did look into it, I eventually received it for only a couple of weeks until I then found my current job. I was told by the Jobseekers office peeps that as I had not applied straight away (some four weeks after my redundancy) I could not claim for those four weeks as my reason "had not occurred to us about claiming until advised to" was not a good enough reason! Well pardon me, Jobseekers peeps, some of us have worked hard all our working lives and do not expect benefits to be handed out on a plate!

Teen_the_Drama_Queen

Ooops just read back what I wrote about the 75K for a car. I don't mean we spent all of that on a car, that was just included in that amount :doh:.

mrs_skint

ignore him Teen he's a prat. Have you spoken to any of the debt charities i.e. CCCS or National Debtline?

Teen_the_Drama_Queen

Thanks Mrs S. I think that will be our next port of call - to be honest, we weren't sure where to go from here. My husband says we should write to Firstplus, which we have now done, but I cannot see that they would help at all. As I pointed out to him, they only loan to homeowners, so if we cannot sell and get what we need for them, they would not be willing to accept a part payment and loan us the remainder as we would be renting from now on. Its a bit of a catch 22, isn't it?

Its kind of ironic, but I had hoped by now that being in our fifties, we would be comfortably off (a rosy view held by me in my early twenties), not living hand to mouth and realising that even if we could stay where we live now, we have another 20 years of mortgage payments and basically will never own this bloody house until we are too old to enjoy it.

(In brighter times a few years ago we started overpaying our mortgage monthly payments and kept doing so even when I was made redundant (yeah, mad or what?) - we brought the mortgage time then to remaining for 13 years, but of course, this year we went to the mortgage company and said we were struggling, they brought the payment back down approx £400 per month less but of course that put an extra 7 years on top).

mrs_skint

Teen please don't beat yourself up about this, you are being proactive now and trying to get it sorted. I'm sure when you speak to someone at CCCS or any of the other free debt advice guys you will feel a lot better.
However, I do know what you're saying - we are both also in our fifties and have another 17 years to pay off our mortgage and at the minute we are on a rate of 8.4%! And because of arrears we are paying nearly £2k a month !!!!!!! So I really can empathise. I also have payday loans that I'm trying to negotiate and on top of that OH has had to cut his hours at work (hopefully temporarily).
I hope you get some constructive advice - sorry, mine isn't that constructive but I'm sure someone will be along soon who can help. Good luck hun keep us updated. Come on here - it's therapeutic, especially when most of us are in similar positions and no-one judges you - well ALMOST no-one (ahem!) xxx

TypeR

Please detail EXACTLY where the £75k went.