secured loan company going to repossess my home?

bailey12345

Dont know if this is the right site to be posting on! I owe Future Mortgages 3192.70 (secured) and am in arrears by 1606.00 not good I know. They did send our account to solicitors twice and I promised to pay 105 per week. (360 payment plus 50 towards arrears) I did this for a while and am now on maternity pay and cant afford to pay even the monthly payment nevermind the arrears! My husband and I are separated now he was made bankrupt last year and is barely making enough to pay his own rent. We have a mortgage of 145,000 on our property and our mortgage co has let us go interest only for a year so that has been a great help. I am returning to work in May when my wages will about double or so and will be able to start paying Future a lot more but dont know what to do in the meantime, is it worth me writing explaining the situation to them, surely they will not repossess our home if we are up to date with our main mortgage? I am now a single parent with 3 kids even though my hubby contributes what he can and I am getting all benefits that I am entitled too. Im going to offer to pay them 50 per week Please Help

Gary123456790

Hi,

Firstly I feel for you in the situation you're in. I have not been in the situation myself but I used to work for a small lender so saw quite a few customers in similar situations.

Firstly, be 100% upfront and honest with your mortgage and loan lenders. People often think they should try and hide problems but it isnt in the lenders interest for you not to be able to pay them back, so they (should) help you as much as they can. Sometimes they cant help you but they should try.

Yes it is possible that a secured loan lender could repossess based on their loan irrespective of other mortgages. Bizarrely it is actually less likely they will repossess if you are behind on your main mortgage because if the main mortgage eats up all your equity then they wont get their money back by repossessing!

You havent said how much equity you have in your house, but is it at all possible to pay off the secured loan by either
- borrowing more on your main mortgage (may be unlikely due to low income at present), or:
- borrowing money from family?

I would advise asking future mortgages for a full breakdown of charges to date and if you think any are unfair, write to them stating such. The lender I worked for would often remove some charges because if you complain to the ombudsman, it costs them £600 case fee so if they let you off a few charges then everyone wins (mainly you).

Look out for charges where no action was actually taken, e.g. a high charge for a letter produced by computer is unfair because it doesnt actually result in a cost to the company. Charges & fees should only be what it costs the company - they cant make a profit on fees/charges so getting a computer to fire off letters and charging £25 each isnt allowed. Charging what it cost to do the job is OK - maybe £10 for stuffing the letter and maintaining the computer systems.

Also read up on Future Mortgages - sites like Consumer Action Group will be full of people talking about fighting fees and Early Repayment Charges, e.g. see http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?56946-future-mortgages

Consider downsizing if at all possible. Not sure if it will be from the information you've given.

Talk to CAB - they have trained advisers who can help you, and will actually talk to your lenders for you (very common when I worked at a lender if people were struggling).

Check with HMRC if you are due any tax back. If your salary has changed it might owe you a few quid - you could say its unlikely but worth checking as you could really use the cash.

Sell something - got an car or anything else of value that you could do without perhaps? Your secured loan isnt massive so this might help

Hope some of this helps - best of luck.

Gary.

bailey12345

Thanks Gary, negative equity in house at the minute so couldnt even pay mortgage company in full if we sold house. 1 "heap" of a car between us which we take turns having.. have exhausted all help, family have been more than kind plus have zero credit rating due to the bankruptcy. will definitely do what you suggested and let you know the outcome.

Cheers for taking the time to reply

Thrugelmir

For advice try the National Debt Helpline.

http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/

Gary123456790

OK it is a bit worse than I hoped!

Forgot to say - if you took out PPI on the future mortgages loan you should make a claim with a PPI claim company. If you dont have original loan docs then request that they re-send them to you. There may be a small fee for this (max £10 ish).

You dont say how much you borrowed from future mortgages but find out in total how much you have paid them back. If it is more than the original loan amount, you might have a good argument for getting them to reduce what you owe or getting off your back for a while.

Your argument to them should be something like this:
- I've paid you the loan back plus more so you've made your money
- I'm in negative equity so there is no point repossessing me
- I am up to date with my main mortgage so I can handle debt OK in general, just circumstances have gone against me (reduced income etc) and I need time to get back on my feet
- If you keep asking for more money i'll have to go bankrupt and you'll get nothing.

They should know that if you went bankrupt they get back nothing or very little so this is NOT in their interest. Tell them if they could freeze your account or reduce the interest rate then when you go back to work in May you'll be able to pay more and then they will get paid back, rather than getting nothing back if they carry on how they are and you end up bankrupt.

Also tell Future Mortgages that instructing solicitors to take you to court is pointless because its not that you are refusing to pay, its that you literally dont have the money. If they took you to court it is likely they would look favourably on you because you have dependants and you are paying your main mortgage OK, it is just Future Mortgages where the problems are.

I would talk to CAB to confirm but I believe your best shot is writing to Future Mortgages with the above points and offering them an amount which you can afford to pay, as long as they stop any legal action. You need to make sure you can stick to this amount!

If you went to court it would be the same outcome - the judge would accept your offer of £x per month and say they cant repossess you if you stick to it.

Dont be scared if they take you to court - just explain your situation fully in court and that you are trying your best but Future Mortgages are not helping you.

Gary.

smitchy73

Gary123456790 wrote: »

OK it is a bit worse than I hoped!

Forgot to say - if you took out PPI on the future mortgages loan you should make a claim with a PPI claim company. If you dont have original loan docs then request that they re-send them to you. There may be a small fee for this (max £10 ish).


Gary.

All the points Gary makes are good but if you had ppi on your loan with future mortgages, DO NOT get a company to claim back, as they will charge you probably between 20 and 30% of what you get back, plus if what you get back if anything would pay arrears first, but the claim company still want their 20-30% regardless of you receiving money in your hand, just above this group of threads is the ppi help section if you did indeed have ppi, you can do it yourself, just look at my signature for that answer, and I'll help if you decided to go down that route.
Hope this helps a wee bit, sorry to see the problems you're having too.

bailey12345

Thanks everyone, all replies really helpful, have no ppi on the loan, have checked that years ago, I borrowed 15,000 in 2006 so I definitely think ive repaid at least that amount back, its the interest and charges that are excessive, but I did sign the contract agreeing to it - total stupidity!! This company are the worst co to deal with I actually did write to them about 2 years ago explaining that I was finding things very tough but they still sent the account to their solicitors for which I was charged 600 for the privilege, Legal loan sharks are the only way to describe them!!

ACG

Im no expert on this, but i used to own a house with someone whos business went tits up. One of the companies from that business managed to take a debt to court and secure it against the house...god knows how, still to this day i dont know how but it happened in court in a amtter of seconds.
Anyway, they won so i did a bit of research into this... (the house got sold a few months later before any other companies managed to secure their debts on it so i never really managed to test this)...

Basically if the house is worth say £100k, and the debt as you say is £3-4k in comparison its such a low amount its unlikely they could make you homeless.
Also the fact you are on mat leave doesnt help, but once you are back in work you will be able to carry on making payments to them - put all of this in writing, even recorded delivery.

When/If it goes to court its unlikely you will be evicted, this is usually only the case if there is no chance of you paying off the debts.

But thats what i have read, like i said ive never tested it so i cant say for sure.

Gary123456790

Hi,

Just thinking about this a little more and it is very unlikely Future Mortgages will repossess you as there is just nothing in it for them due to there not being enough value to even pay the 1st mortgagee.

Secondly fsa regulated lenders are bound by the fsa principle of TCF - "Treating customers fairly". Future Mortgages should know how much your house is worth (they would have got a valuation at the start of the loan, and can adjust this using HPI - house price index) and most likely they also know how much you owe on your 1st mortgage (2nd charge lenders tend to keep up to date on this so they know how much at risk their loans are) so they should already know it would be pointless to repossess and they just wouldn't do it.

I would suggest to them in your letter that instructing solicitors and adding the cost to your loan with no intention of repossession is not TCF as they are just adding costs and making threats with no intention of carrying them out and whist knowing it is pointless because you don't have the cash!

When I worked at the lender there were accounts that were just left with no action being taken and little payments being made because there was no equity so no point in repossessing. Effectively they were waiting on these accounts for either house prices to rise or job situations to improve so payments can be made.

When you make an offer to them of an affordable amount, confirm if they will report this as missed a payment each month to the credit agencies or not, as if they did it by extending the term to reduce the payment then it would kerb the damage on your credit report a bit.

As long as you can stick to the offer you make them, they will hopefully ignore you until may!

Best of luck!

Gary.