MSE News: Halifax to repay £500m to 300,000 mortgage holders

lisa2621

scorpio1983 wrote: »

Somi,

I have also received a £250 lump sum payment. Not sure, if you have been able to figure out where the difference for a refund of overpaid interest and the lump sum consideration lies.

I took out my mortgage in March 2007. The mortgage offer states under condition 4

"The mortgage is a Tracker at CMA695 - Variable rate which is 0.29% above the BoE base rate currently 5.25% which ends on 14/02/2009, to give a current rate payable of 5.54%. This rate will be adjusted within 30 days of a change to the BoE base rate.

Your loan reverts to Halifax Standard Variable Rate currently 7.25% after 15/02/2009."

In addition to the mortgage offer I received two booklets:
- Halifax Mortgage Conditions 2004, 2nd edition;
- Information about your mortgage.

The latter states in section 12 under the heading Interest Rates:

"We have set a limit on the variable base rates that apply to our mortgages so that they will not be more than 2% above the BoE repo rate [...]. We can change the "% limit but before we do we will give 30 days notice to customers who pay interest at a variable base rate [...] and are subject to an early repayment charge. Those customers will then have three months to repay their mortgage if they want to without having to pay the early repayment charge."

Do you have the same wording in your documents? To me this is pretty unclear. Halifax reasoning for good will payments looks very opaque to me.

Given the above wording, I am considering taking legal action and am currently looking for a specialised legal advisor. Any recommendations would be very welcome.

To add to this:

My understanding was always that the Halifax Standard Variable Rate is a variable rate tracking the BoE rate at a margin of 2%. It has never been obvious that this margin may be changed.

Scorpio

My understanding is - if you were tied in by redemption fees in October 2008, you should have received a letter from HBOS informing you about the changes to their SVR. The refund of 1% only applies to those who were not tied in by redemption fees at the time of these letters goings out.

vurtboy

They are giving me back £5905. Hurrah!

Leedsit

Hi all,

Were an ex Halifax customer! We left in march this year and took out a tracker mortgage in July 2007, which went onto the svr in July 2009, which we stayed on until march 2011, just phoned Halifax and they state our account was not affected. However it does seem to fit the criteria, so totally confused, there doesn't seem to be a black and White model for who gets the compensation.

Cheers, Lee

lisa2621

I have just called Halifax to find out if letters to past customers have been sent out. They told me there was a delay in checking all past customer's accounts. The letters wont be going out now until the end of May. Gutted!!

xxxxxlollyxxxxx

vurtboy wrote: »

They are giving me back £5905. Hurrah!

May i ask what your circumstances were

LondonLass

April has come and gone. i've still not heard from the Halifax, so as it stands i can only go by what i was told when i called them up that i am not eligible. I am hugely suspicious however going by replies on this thread that no-one who has left the Halifax appears to have received a letter or been given encouraging news when they phoned up. I would love to hear from anyone who has left the Halifax but received a goodwill payment.

stripee

Just had a letter through saying we're getting a goodwill gesture payment of £2085. OS balance is in region of £136, now £2K less I guess. Woo!

Had mortgage with them since September 2007 I think. TBH am very happy with the situation as at present our rate is far lower than the fixed rate we were on before, so win win I guess. Money's pretty tight at the mo.

Monthly payments were £793. Any opinions on whether we should continue with monthly payments as they were, in effect making a small monthly overpayment??

curlygirl1971

It's entirely upto you - if money is tight then you may need the extra cash saved to give more flexibility to your budget.

When the SVR goes up, so will your standard repayment. If you hadn't have had the goodwill payment made to your mortgage then the increase to your standard repayment would have been even more.

The best way to answer your question and to see what you can afford to 'over-pay' is to use a mortgage calculator. There are a number of them floating around but I like one kindly provided by a MSE user called 'Locoblade'. It's fairly comprehensive so may take a little time to orientate yourself but you will be able to play around with your figures and predict what your standard repayment will be when the SVR increases (you're going to have to give that one your best guess) and what the effect of any over-payment will be.

There was 16 years left on the original term of my mortgage before they made the goodwill payment. After the payment my mortgage balance was £33500 and the effect of the £870 payment was to knock 5 months of my mortgage life

mattwmax

I called them the other day and was told that they were not able to tell me whether I was going to get a payment or not at that stage, but the letters for customers who have now left the Halifax are going to start going out on 6 May.

Leedsit, I hope that they were wrong in what they told you (strange that you get told something where I was just told nothing...) one thing that I have seen on here is that it appears that if you drew more money on your mortgage then updated terms conected to that new money superceded the terms you had before, I think this has screwed people. I am worried as I took out mortgage offers for 3 months in advance that I never drew on to protect me from rising rates, if those mean I don't get a payment I'm going to be gutted.

Anyway, still waiting for the letter...

Leedsit

mattwmax wrote: »

I called them the other day and was told that they were not able to tell me whether I was going to get a payment or not at that stage, but the letters for customers who have now left the Halifax are going to start going out on 6 May.

Leedsit, I hope that they were wrong in what they told you (strange that you get told something where I was just told nothing...) one thing that I have seen on here is that it appears that if you drew more money on your mortgage then updated terms conected to that new money superceded the terms you had before, I think this has screwed people. I am worried as I took out mortgage offers for 3 months in advance that I never drew on to protect me from rising rates, if those mean I don't get a payment I'm going to be gutted.

Anyway, still waiting for the letter...

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the reply, our mortgage was a simple tracker, offer in July 2007 with no advances etc, saw the contract through till July 2009 which is when we went onto the svi where we stayed till approx march this year, so was on the original terms from the 2007 offer which does have the 2% statement in.

Also seen a similar thread earlier on where a current customer had virtually the same mortgage but was an august 2007 tracker and they had a payout. So to be honest not sure what is going on but get the feeling neither does the halifax.:(