Mortgage company sent repossession documents to wrong address!

songbird66

Hi everyone!

Not sure if my situation is familiar to any of you or if you can advise or help, but here goes.....

I have (or perhaps I should say had) a mortgage for a property that was my former home, which I had to rent out when it wouldn't sell after I left to move in with my now husband. While it was up for sale, I was made redundant and couldn't keep up the payments, but after the house was rented out, I maintained full mortgage payments and paid something off the arrears every month and for 18 months the account was in good shape.

My tenants left the house in a terrible state and with six months rent owing and I notified the mortgage company of this and kept up contact with them, paying what I could afford (I am still unemployed and now unable to work because of ill health) while an insurance claim was ongoing for the damage to the let property. At the same time, my health suffered a setback and I found out I needed a major operation. The claim was underpaid and I couldn't find a contractor willing to complete the repairs for that price, but was unable to do much myself as I had become too ill by then.

I agreed to meet the MC's field agent to discuss my income and expenditure and she told me that, given my circumstances, she was going to recommend three months' grace to allow me to get the surgery I needed, recover from it get the work completed and let the house out again. I recieved a letter from the MC two weeks later and I called them and discussed the field agents report but the person I spoke to was unable to confirm whether or not the period of grace had been approved. but that he would make a note of our conversation and that if any further details were needed someone would call me back. I asked at the same time for some advice on a voluntary assisted sale and was told that I would be referred to the relevant department and someone would call me back in a few weeks, as there was a high demand for their services.

In the meantime I was admitted to hospital and have had a bit of a rough time of things following the surgery, with post operative problems and infection after infection. I had received no correspondence from the MC since the end of January and no phone calls either.

That is until last Friday when a letter came through the door saying that a Law of Property Act Receiver was now in possession of the property and had changed the locks. I rang the MC and was told that the only way i could change the situation was to pay off all the arrears, plus three months full mortgage payments in advance and the MC's legal fees, all of which amounted to around £6000 - a sum I couldn't lay my hands on in a month of Sundays right now! I couldn't figure out why I had recieved no notification of repossession or a court hearing but the MC weren't really able to throw any light on that and told me that it had all gone through and they were waiting to sell the house and notify me of the shortfall.

I called them again today to ask some questions about how the process went ahead without my knowing and was told that I am now falling between two departments, as I am no longer in the mortgage accounts system and am not yet uploaded to the sales and repossessions dept. The penny has dropped today that they have obviously sent all the documents to the empty property, despite my having made clear to them that under no circumstances was any correspondence about my mortgage to be sent to that property as I did not live there. Then they suddenly remembered and sent the last letter to the proper address.

The repossession has gone ahead without my being made aware of it and I've been given 7 days to collect any chattels I wish to remove. As far as I am concerned, I have done pretty much everything I could, in keeping them up to date with my circumstances and I feel that if I had known about the court case, i could have prepared a plan for re-letting the house and re establishing full payments for the judge. Now that they have repossessed the property, do I have any redress against them for failing to ensure that correspondence was sent to the correct address? I am even wondering if they have done this deliberately as it seems a bit odd to send nothing for months and then send a letter to the right address after repossession. Anyone had similar experiences? Any advice, please?

Thrugelmir

songbird66 wrote: »

do I have any redress against them for failing to ensure that correspondence was sent to the correct address?

Redirection notice?

gazfocus

Please edit your post to include paragraphs...reading that made my head hurt

However, I do feel for you and I sincerely hope you manage to get this mess sorted out. Hope you feel better soon.

DVardysShadow

Do you have evidence of having told them in writing of the correspondence address? If so, it might be possible to get the repo judgement set aside. But it is a slim hope.

[Please go back and edit your post to put some paragraphs in. Failure to do this will seriously reduce the number of people who bother to read it]

holly_hobby

Question = for the 18 mths of so when the property was let/not your main residence, where was your annual mge statement sent ?

How did you agree to meet the mortgage rep to discuss the matter - was this via telephone or did they issue correspondence requesting the meeting ?

If so, to what address was the corres issued ?

Where did you conduct the meeting with them .. was this at you own home or the property in question ?

(the above q's are designed to provide evidence that the lender was both in possession of and had previously used the alternative address. So that issuing the possession correspondence to the (empty) property in question, was a both a clear deviance from their normal handling of the account and apparently it could be argued, knowingly incorrect - to hopefully demonstrate to the court both negligence and obstruction on their part in the events leading up to the possession order being granted).

Aside from that and speaking to their repo section, you must try and get this suspended if possible, so you need to urgently get to a solicitor/cab for free advice, and take guidance if the possession and sale order can be set aside or suspended. Or put on hold until at least the lender can prove that they gave you every opportunity to stop the action, which would include issuing court attendance orders etc to the correct address - otherwise I would look to have the order set aside as evidenced by their maladministration which predjuiced your position at the hearing that took place, giving the order.

You may not have time, but a Statue Access Request (max £10) on the account will provide you with all correspondence (which may assist in proving that they were in receipt of your home address), and audio data on your account - BUT under a SAR request they are given 40 days to comply with the requested info.

IF however, you just had your mail re-directed with RM - this has to be renewed every 12 mths, with a max term of 24 mths I think. (RM site is down currently for me to check).

So if this was the case (and you met the rep at the let property), I can't see a Judge setting aside the order, unless you can use and they accept your health issues as a mitigating factor to your non-renewal of the re-direct arrangement, and also that the lender was aware that you were not resident at the property, with they having details on record of an alternative point of contact.

Hope this helps

Holly

songbird66

Firstly, apologies for the lack of paragraphs, advice noted and post edited.

I did notify them in writing of the change of address, although I can't blooming find the letter I wrote, typically. Change of computer since then, so the file may have gone astray:(. However, all correspondence, including mortgage statements have been coming to my current address for the past 3 years, including this year's, which arrived six weeks before the letter notifying me that the house had been repossessed. No other correspondence in between.

I will take your advice and get in touch with CAB, but just wanted to know if anyone had been through this before and what the outcome might be.

Thanks for your replies x

holly_hobby

Having previous correspondence over an extended period to your home address, in my opinion, gives you a significant and robust argument, that the administration of the possession process was unfair and inadequately administered.

Especially if the ONLY correspondence (since your vacation of the property), was in connection with the possession order - as this would paint rather a transparent picture of the lender to the court.

You need to take legal advice as a priority - CAB do have duty solicitors, whom should be able to assist with advice on how to go about having the order set aside or suspended, but they can't go to court for you under free CAB if reqd (AFAIK - but happy to be corrected).

Hope this helps ... good luck.

Holly

Hanky_Panky

Whilst I would agree you have a case to stop/reverse the possession based on previous correspondance being sent to the correct address I would seriously question if it was worth it.

You may gain the possession back but what then ? Are you able to re-start payments at a level where you are clearing the arrears (even if this is only a pound or two each month) ?

Will that be immediately or will you have to find someone to carry out the work first then adverstise and re-let ?

Really my view is that unless you can re-start payments immediately you are probably just delaying the inevitable and incurring more debt as a result.

It may not be easy to swallow but from a purely financial aspect it may be your best option to just let them have it.

Another quick thought - you may be able to negotiate with them to waive all the usual repossession fees as you could easily claim you would have given them voluntary possession if they had written to you at the correct address. At least you are gaining slightly from this as well then.

holly_hobby

Of course a possession order will affect all future mortgage applications, as you do have to reveal if you have had a property repossessed (indeed there is a register of such, which the lenders have access to and check)

So, it would be clearly beneficial for this to be se-aside (due to the issues surrounding the order), to give the OP every opportunity to try and sell this under their own steam, even if they only break even/suffer an overall loss - in order to try and avoid the very serious and on going future issues a possession order and sale will cause them.

Just rolling over on this, esp in view of how the lender has handled it, would not be my own choice for the reasons stated - however this must be balanced with the OPs own capacity to absorb any non-recoverable legal costs that may be incurred as a result of the challenge.

Hope this helps

Holly