Help needed quickly!

ibroxkev

OK, we have been trying for ages to sell our 4th floor maisonette, mainly due to my wife and son's health problems, house finally sold last month and we found a private rent to move to on monday (28/2), house sale was meant to be finalised on tuesday (1/3).

We heard yesterday that the buyers have not been able to get their mortgage and the sale has fallen through, we have already paid a deposit on the rental place and we are really not in a position to not move. This leaves us with the problem of what to do with the house, we have thought of asking for a 6 month payment holiday but this still leaves us paying insurance, council tax etc on house which we can't afford, thought of renting but if anything went wrong with house we'd be up the creek and if house was sitting empty we couldn't pay mortgage anyway, we thought of giving keys back to bank (Northern Rock) and going for voluntary repossesion, but we'd still have to pay the mortgage until it sold, I'm wondering if the best thing we can do is walk away from it and let them repossese the house and probably bankrupt us. We have other debt - I have about £5.5k on credit cards and their is an unsecured loan on top of the mortgage of about £13k which we intended to keep paying if house was sold.

Help, our heads are spinning and we are supposed to move on Monday!

Kev

apps1

Hi Kev

I can't offer much advice, but I was in a similar position a while ago and I found that the council give a break on council tax of up to 6mths on a second property if its in the process of being sold. I'm pretty sure this still applies. I simply contacted the council office, filled in the necessary form and they adjusted the bill accordingly. They did make me aware that the property had to be empty, that they could do a check etc.

bottleofred

Hi ibroxkev,

What about a short term lease arrangement on the maisonnete (say for 3-6 months). It may be worth a go, although I realise it'll probably take at least a week or 2 to organise this. Hopefully someone with more knowledge than me will be along soon to provide more advice.

Good luck

Red

ibroxkev

Thanks for the replies, as I said before we really don't want to rent it out, we just want rid of it as we wouldn't have any sort of cash to fix any problems not covered by insurance and if house was empty we'd be screwed.

Kev

CIS

I can't offer much advice, but I was in a similar position a while ago and I found that the council give a break on council tax of up to 6mths on a second property if its in the process of being sold. I'm pretty sure this still applies. I simply contacted the council office, filled in the necessary form and they adjusted the bill accordingly. They did make me aware that the property had to be empty, that they could do a check etc.

A Class C Council Tax exemption can be awarded for up to 6 months on any property which is both unoccupied and substantially unfurnished.