Barclays no Angels

CB18

This is a tale you will not believe but may be of help to someone. In July 2000 I purchased a house using Woolwich/ Barclays to mortgage the property. They said they would carry out an independent survey on the property and I paid for that. I obtained a further advance to modernise the property and then remortgaged in 2006 to a better deal. Now it all goes wrong,as I noticed a number of cracks appearing all over the property and they were significant and I knew I had a major problem. I had a copy of my survey sent to me in 2004 and it was a three page survey with no problems mentioned. I had a a valuer look at the property and he said it was only useful as a site as it had major structural problems. I wrote to Barclays on a number of occasions and they ignored me totally,so I contacted the Ombudsman to apply some fore to they to reply. Then out of the blue a fourth page to my original survey appeared saying that before I purchase the property in 2000 I should obtain an engineers report. This was news to me. Lots of letters went from me to Barclays with no reply so I withheld my mortgage payment ,this woke them up and they set about repossessing the property. All along I had smelt a rat and guess what I was correct. After sending many SAR requests someone in Barclays made a mistake and sent me their internal emails and guess what. Barclays had know before I moved in that there was a subsidence problem with the property and I now had the surveys stating this. The internal emails ask"Why did we give a mortgage on the property when we knew there was a subsidence problem,and why did we remortgage the property in 2006 when we know there was a serious subsidence problem"
That is only the start of their lies also they stated "we are not going to meet the owner",and the independent survey I mentioned early was carried out by Ekins who were owned by Woolwich/Barclays more lies.
There are many more lies in their documents but I have said enough,the case against me is ongoing and I have had to issue proceedings against Barclays costing me a small fortune.
They know they are in the wrong and still will not even talk to me,the Sun are now going to publish this tale of woe and stree and I will post a link.

Sorry for going on so much but hopefully this may help someone to take on the bank I have learnt a lot and if I can be of help to anyone let me know.

andyfromotley

I wouldnt have thought that stopping paying your mortgage was a particulqarly wise thing to do.

Jhoney_2

Agree with above.

However, having got their attention, I hope you then resumed payments as they did give you a loan and you are obliged to make the repayments.

I hope you are able to find a resolution and thank you for sharing this situation.

CB18

Thanks for taking the time to read my post,as you can see I told Barclays all along that I was withholding the mortgage payments until we could get together and try and resolve the problem. To this day I am still waiting. So I paid the mortgage for many years and my market value property of £230,000 is now worth £30,000 as a site.

In legal terms Barclays should never have given me my mortgage as they could not underwrite it.

kingstreet

I'm concerned about repeated use of the word survey throughout the opening post.

At any time, did the OP actually commission their own survey, or did they rely totally on the lender's mortgage report & valuation?

CB18

If you look at it the same as a dodgy car dealer,he sells you are car with know defects and if you can prove he knew about the defects you are entitled to your money back. Barclays knew my house had a serious defect before I moved in therefore no difference than the car dealer.

amnblog

The Sun?


Wasn't aware this kind of story is their bag. Sounds more Money Mail to me.

CB18

The survey was organised by Woolwich but it was stated that it was totally independent.Upon further investigation i discovered that the company who carried it out were owned by Woolwich therefore not independent and they were never registered with the Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

amnblog

CB18 wrote: »

If you look at it the same as a dodgy car dealer,he sells you are car with know defects and if you can prove he knew about the defects you are entitled to your money back. Barclays knew my house had a serious defect before I moved in therefore no difference than the car dealer.

They did not sell you the house - they lent you the money.


Surely your case is against the surveyor, assuming you commissioned a survey for your purposes.

CB18

They like the fact that I have all the written proof.

CB18

The survey company was owned by Woolwich/ Barclays but I was told they were independent.