Mortgage help please

Lauraof

I'm after some advice please its a long story and been going on for a number of years now but i think we are reaching the end.... in 2009 we were unable to pay out mortgage and then had to contact our mortgage company to advise them we would be making a contribution and that we were putting our house on the market to pay the cost of the mortgage, the mortgage was £642,000 and previously the house had been valued at £850,000. Unfortunately in 2007 the house flooded twice which has meant no-one has wanted to touch the property, we have reduce the price over the years, we were due to go to court for repossession in January 2010 but we had evidence from our two estate agents to state the property would have sold if it wasn’t for the flooding.

This resulted in the mortgage company – coming back to us through Evershed their reclaim agent to advise we were being given another 3 months to sell the property. We dropped the price again and finally agreed to accept an offer of 680,000.

Prior to agreeing this we wrote to our mortgage company asking for the early redemption penalty to be withdrawn to allow us to have some money from the sale to start our lives again. They wrote to us and stated that if a sale of £642,000 was achieved then they agreed to waive the redemption penalty. This is the wording from the letter “If you are able to achieve a sale price sufficient to clear Santander's charge currently £642,000.31 (excluding the early repayment charge £24,153.00) I would be happy to authorise the waiver of this charge.”

With this in mind we agreed the sale price – at a significant loss to both of us and viewed it that we had enough money to pay the solicitors fees and to be able to rent somewhere for us to live. Yesterday when we tried to get the finalised sum for the sale to go through Santander have come back and basically said that because we are achieving a sale price of £680,000 they now what whatever is left for the early redemption penalty.

We contacted the financial ombudsman for advise but Santander have 8 weeks in which to reply, the sale is due to go through at the end of July and we are not in a position to pull out because we may not get a buyer again, we are repaying all of the missed payments although living through that period has been pure hell.

Through all of this we could have gone bankrupt but want to try and re-pay debts and do the right thing. We have had the hounding telephone calls and had to site the harassment act. My husband is slowly repaying all his loans, we have done everything in our control to try and resolve this matter. He doesn’t want to go bankrupt because he runs his own business and we are under so much stress throughout this whole situation. Please can someone advise on where we stant – we really need this money to re-start our life and how was it acceptable to Santander to not receive it if the sale covered the mortgage but now they are aware we are achieving a little bit more they want it – after written agreement to waive the charge.

Please help we really want all this to end but to be able to pay our solicitor/sale fees and be able to start again.

kingstreet

Given the timescale involved, I see no alternative but to pay the ERP to get the charge released, continuing your complaint to Santander and ultimately to FOS, if not resolved earlier.

Lauraof

Thanks for the feedback - does anyone else have any experience of this - it seems so unfair

Thrugelmir

I can see where Santander are coming from. Providing the mortgage was redeemed then the ERC would be waived. That's what the letter is inferring. Whereas you have actually sold the property for a far higher price than perhaps you thought at one time.

Santander didn't explicitly say that you were entitled to a given sum from the sale proceeds.

Unfortunately you are contractually obliged to pay up. The waiver is totally discretionary. As harsh as that may sound.