Mis-sold mortgage 10 Year Fixed Rate

no_coordination

Before I give the full details, I'm sorry to give you a little bit of history to the issue that my wife and I have.

2005 - I moved into a new house with my Mother and Father. Unfortunately, at the time of moving, my father couldn't get the mortgage for the house due to ill health. He therefore asked if it was ok to put in my name whilst he recovered. Unfortunately in 2006 he passed away, leaving me with the house, bills and my mother to look after. At the time, I never had experience of dealing with mortgage's and other stuff like that. I just signed on the dotted line. (Although under due stress from grieving, I have now come to learn that this would have been mistake number one).

January 2008 - My fianc! and I decided to do the grown up stuff (after she had moved in in 2007) and properly take over the mortgage of the house. My bank at the time booked in an appointment and we had a chat with the mortgage advisor. they explained that 'something' was happening with the house market and that they expect the mortgage rates to increase within the next month. They therefore suggested a 10 year fixed rate re-mortgage so that we definitely knew the exact amount we would be paying each month. 5.9% based on a £108,000 mortgage against a house worth £135,000. To make sure we also got to seal the deal, the Package account I was paying for on my personal account (taken out because I was told it was the only way to get the loan at the time), was to be transferred over so that the interest rate was kept down on the mortgage. (Mistake number two I've since learnt).

Still being wet behind the ears, and not knowing our stuff about mortgage's, we never had dealings before previously, and thought that as we were speaking to a mortgage advisor, they knew their stuff. After all, this is the bank I've been dealing with since I was five. They wouldn't pull the wool over my eyes (mistake no 3).

We followed the advise and took the ten year fixed rate. A month later, and the crash of mortgage rates happened, the credit crunch hit and a financial crisis was happening before us. We didn't want to believe it, and sort of expected that the rates would increase up and above what were were expected to pay, as righting advised by the bank.

2013 - Now we feel we have been taken for a ride and that every time we've been to the bank to discuss this, they won't budge. We think we've been given duff advise, and that they led us to take the 10 year fixed rate, and mis-selling us the mortgage based on the information the advisor gave us at the time. It seems that we've been held by the short and curlies all the way through this nightmare. We don't know what to do now. Everyone else seems to be getting a bit of free reign on their mortgage re-payments whilst we are struggling to make sure we have enough in the bank to cover our running costs.

Can anyone advise as to what we can do and if we can do anything about it? I feel so cheated by the under handed way we've been handled by all this and now that they've got our money, any cries for help in changing this situation involve them snubbing us out, or asking to pay the redemption fee of nearly £6,000 to get out of the mortgage. I was made redundant 2011, and now work as an agency worker. Therefore, I can't even get a re-mortgage to cover the cost of the redemption fee to simply change it over.

Final Note - Althoguh I understand this isn't under the same sort of category. How will this affect me as well if I want to re-claim mis-sold Package Account charges and PPI?

Any help or advise, either good or bad would be much apprecitaed.

Ian and Beccy

ILW

Are you an adult or do you have any learning difficulties?

no_coordination

I'm 31, and no learning difficulties. Neither has my wife (29).

marathonic

Don't see there being much you can do. Fixed rate mortgages are taken out by two types of people:

• those that think rates are going to rise and are willing to 'take a gamble' on this thought; or
• those that have no idea where rates are going to go but know that they couldn't afford their mortgages if they did happen to rise 2%+

Regardless of which of these categories a person falls under, they don't have much of a chance of a complaint being upheld. Taking out fixed rate mortgages will see you save money at times. As things turned out, this wasn't one of those times - that doesn't necessarily mean it was missold.

GMS

1/ Sorry for your loss.
2/ You weren't talking to a mortgage adviser you were talking to a sales person at your bank.
3/ You got what you wanted, a fixed rate.
4/ Are you in difficulty with the mortgage?.
5/ You also want to claim for mis-sold accounts?
6/ If the base rate had gone to 10% would you have accepted a mis-sold claim from the lender and agreed to a 12% mortgage rate?

You were non-advised to take a rate which you were more than happy with at inception. We can't tell the future unfortunately.

What do you think/hope should happen?

ruggedtoast

Presumably if rates had gone up rather than down you wouldn't be especially accommodating if the bank asked you to let them out of the 10 year fix and charge you more each month?

5.9% isn't bad at all for a 10 year deal, and you still have til 2018 for things to even up; though a rise in rates will probably hit your equity hard so would be a pyrrhic victory at best.

You may however have a case for mis-selling if you were told that rates were about to rise and took out a fix on that basis; unfortunately I doubt you would have any way of proving that.

My personal experience is that financial advisers will lie through their teeth to get you to sign up to something, and then deny all knowledge of what they said afterwards.

Unfortunately the lesson you have learned is that people who make selling money their career are frequently not especially trustworthy.

shortchanged_2

Question is...........were you forced to take out this mortgage or were there other options available to you?

mrginge

I remortgaged in 2007 onto a lifetime tracker of br+.95%. I was not 'wet behind the ears' and knew exactly what i was doing. I have since saved a fortune in interest and even have the facility to borrow additional funds at the same rate and invest it elsewhere for greater returns.

Last week i had a complaint from the bank that i had unfairly forced them into this deal and they wanted compensation amounting to £270,000.*

What should i do?

* this bit not true.

opinions4u

First of all, check whether you were advised. It's more likely you made an "informed choice" which puts the onus on you.

Secondly, assuming you were advised, that advice is not (never has been and never will be) a guarantee that the rate you fix at is going to be better than base rate, ongoing mortgage rates etc.

Many experienced economists saw interest rate rises on the horizon in 2008. There was absolute uncertainty about the safety of the banks, unknown economic ramifications and, for those of us who have experienced 15% plus mortgage rates, a real fear that we could return to those levels.

The fact rates subsequently fell, in part driven by an exceptional decision by our political masters to abandon inflation targets and print Monopoly money like confetti, was not something that was obviously going to happen.

In uncertain times you were sold a product that gives you absolute certainty.

So taking that in to account, how do you think you were misadvised?

dunstonh

People who buy fixed rate mortgages do so because they want certainty of monthly payment. They are not about having the cheapest option.

Fixed rate deals are certainly not bad advice and you cannot complain about events that had yet to happen. The Ombudsman does would not allow a crystal ball complaint.

How will this affect me as well if I want to re-claim mis-sold Package Account charges and PPI?

You were made redundant. So, wouldn't the PPI have been used?

Mortgage complaints are low. The uphold rate at the FOS is low. The only real area they are dealing with are people who were sold sub prime mortgages when they could have had prime. Your complaint has no legs based on what you have said.

_Andy_

Ludicrously long post with much extraneous information, which can be boiled down to:

You were offered a 10 year fixed rate as you wanted security of payments.
You accepted this and were aware of ERCs etc.
You then (not through the fault of the bank) had payments higher than what were later available on the market.
You blame the bank for this.

There was nothing 'mis sold' about this. Chalk it down to experience and move on.