Repossession Court Letter

secrets76

I am so worried for a relative - she has had Court Letter to start repossession proceedings.
I have acted on her behalf in dealing with mortgage people asking for different options all of which has been refused. The house has been on the market since June - plenty of viewings but no offers - no payments to the mortgage (interest only) have been paid recently due to unaffordability.
Due to experience with mortgage company, written to ombudsman to complain but this can take ages and not halt anything.
Does anyone have any experience of this what is likely to happen and is it a good idea to attend? The house has 200k equity AFTER the mortgage will have been paid - what is the likely of the judge giving more time to sell?
Also applied for mortgage interest payment benefit as she has PEnsion Credit.
I really do not want this to happen to her.

maninthestreet

Why is that your friend is now unable to make any mortage payments?

latecomer

I would guess if you have had lots of viewings and no offers then its over priced. Drop the price if you want it to sell.

saverbuyer

Drop the price to a level it will sell at. If there's 200k equity then down size and enjoy life instead of having the constant threat of repossession from living beyond your means. They don't need this hassle at their age.

secrets76

She can do this but they're threatening to reposess before hand.

latecomer

I would expect that the bank would much rather the house was sold than to have to repossess it as it would make life easier for them too. I also suspect (but have no direct knowledge of) that a repossession takes a while to get granted which would presumably give time to sell if the price was dropped.

secrets76

Thank you for that - the house has been on the market and now we have a court date, if we drop the price I do not think it would stop going to court.

Has anyone any experience of going to a reposession hearing - what is likely to happen etc ..... ?

Dave_Ham

You need more specific help than on this forum.

Why has it recently got worse and cannot pay ie the circumstances?

She/you will absolutely need to go to the court, given the expected age and situation they will not automatically repossess, although she needs to pay them something and have a plan.

Do not tell her Estate Agent this situation or they will play it to their financial advantage...

The courts have no appetite to repo a property so do not give them a reason....

Thrugelmir

secrets76 wrote: »

Has anyone any experience of going to a reposession hearing - what is likely to happen etc ..... ?

Well no payments to the mortgage is going to be a huge negative factor. As the arrears are just mounting up.

No point in complaining. As your relative is in breach of mortgage terms.

secrets76

Thanks Dave Ham - do you have experience of this- you say they will not automatically repossess? IS this the case even if gone to Court hearing? I do realise she is in breach of terms - its poor financial planning thats got to this ..... but any solution we have put forward since they have rejected - there is a lot of equity so not sure how it will all work. 2nd agent being put on this week as well as price dropped - court date 13th December.

Annisele

In general lenders prefer not to repossess. However, in my (very limited) experience, they're far more likely to try to repossess if the borrower doesn't talk to them than if the borrower comes up with realistic plans to pay off the debt without repossession.

I once saw a lender try to repossess over £6k, on a house worth more than £300k - but that was because the borrower had refused to make any payments whatsoever for more than three years. (In brief - shortfall on a mortgage endowment, borrower thought it was the lender's fault, so borrower refused to pay anything. Court had no sympathy and borrower ended up writing a cheque in the courtroom).

How realistic is the £200k equity? If the lender thinks it's more like £100k, it'll probably want to repossess - the lender will think that it'll never sell (because in the lender's eyes the house is overvalued by £100k).