Previous Owner's Debts - Should I worry?

Davey88

Hi,

Having recently moved in October last year it has come apparent since the Royal Mail divert has ended so we are now getting all the previous owners mail.

We have returned to sender (RTS) the majority of the post but have noticed that a lot of the letters have been from Debt collecting agencies.

Some of the letters did not have a return address so we opened some and were shocked to discover the amount of money owed.

A rough estimate would be that the previous owners owe around £20K to various lenders from, Next, Littlewoods, Comet, credit cards, various store cards, Inland revenue...the list goes on and on.

My question is - should we worry about any adverse credit against the house / address?

We have applied for and got credit whilst been at the new address and have not had any problems to date. But due to the amounts of debt we are seeing, along with letters threatening to send balifs round we are worried how it may effect our credit rating or ability to get credit in the future.

Does anyone have any experience with a similar problem or advise on what action we can take to avoid any problems in the future?

We both have excellent credit ratings and dont want to run the risk of any credit agencies black listing our address.

Thanks very much for any help or advise.

elsien

It shouldn't affect you as it goes on the person not the address, but if you are concerned, you could always post a notice of dissociation with the credit reference agencies to be on the safe side.

frogula

AFAIK addresses are not blacklisted anymore.

ifits

we had the same thing happen and had no problems with credit but it is worth having your ID and some proof of when the house was bought incase the balifs turn up

silvercar

we had the same problem and have had baliffs turning up. Utility bills showing my name and address seems to send them on their way. Hasn't affected our credit rating.

Our sellers have now gone bankrupt and they haven't notified a lot of their creditors; court papers have started arriving here now that their Royal Mail redirection service has finished. In fact I'm getting a bit peeved as they have clearly been using our address and relying on the redirection service long after we bought.

mixu

Check your credit report with Experian and Equifax — if anybody else's details show up on the report do as elsien says and ask the agencies to disassociate them from yourselves. Your credit rating should remain unaffected as long as lenders, etc. can only see your credit history.

Davey88

Hello,

Thanks to all those replies who have given advise / shared thier stories.

Puts my mind at rest somewhat.

Thanks again
Davey88

Vickicb

We had the same problem with our last house, previous owner had lots of debt and had moved out 2 months before completion to escape the creditors. We had bailiffs around regularly and as we had no forwarding address we just kept a letter from our solicitor by the front door confirming completion of the purchase. The only issue was that despite the fact we obtained a brand new phone number, NTL messed up and listed our number and address with the last owners name for the first year, and for the next 7 years we lived there we still got calls for him.