Receiving mortgage arrears letters for someone else

Landofwood

I moved into my new home in March, and last week I received a letter from The Woolwich addressed to the former tenant. The tenant vacated the property a year before I moved in.

The letter states that the the tenant (who was renting this property) is behind on their mortgage payments and a 'Field Agent' has been instructed to visit.

There is no reference to any other property on the letter, only my address - except the address has 'The' at the start, whereas mine does not.

I checked the Land Registry and that all looks clear, the only charge against the property is from my lender (Natwest) and of course my solicitor checked this out before allowing the sale to go ahead.

I called Barclays/Woolwich this morning and they were less than helpful. Refused to talk to me as I am not the mortgage holder, and wouldn't even confirm if the correspondence address is different to the mortgaged property.

There is no forwarding address for the former tenant.

I guess I have nothing to worry about as they can't repossess my property as they don't have a charge against it, but I am a little concerned that there's some fraud somewhere. For example, I still receive all of this person's mail - bank statements, new driving license and other debt letters, for example. Also, the address on the mortgage letter being very slightly different concerns me.

Any ideas on what I should do next?

getmore4less

You should be returning all this stuff,

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/post/problems-with-post/problems-with-post-delivery/you-re-receiving-someone-else-s-mail/

Landofwood

getmore4less wrote: »

You should be returning all this stuff,

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/post/problems-with-post/problems-with-post-delivery/you-re-receiving-someone-else-s-mail/

Yep I'm chucking everything back in the post with 'not known at this address' written on them.

This one has 'CONTINUED OVERDUE AMOUNT ON YOUR MORTGAGE' in bold writing showing through the letter box, so my wife opened it.

binerds81

Hi landofwood, I have received previous tennants mail before and all I did was cross out the address on the envelope and write NOT AT THIS ADDRESS across the top and post in in a letterbox - royal mail then send it back as long as their is a sender's address on the back of the envelope.

I didn't even open it as it was not addressed to me, and the letters soon stopped as it was then up to the sender to put a chase on finding them and maybe mark their file with a "gone away" record.

Landofwood

binerds81 wrote: »

Hi landofwood, I have received previous tennants mail before and all I did was cross out the address on the envelope and write NOT AT THIS ADDRESS across the top and post in in a letterbox - royal mail then send it back as long as their is a sender's address on the back of the envelope.

I didn't even open it as it was not addressed to me, and the letters soon stopped as it was then up to the sender to put a chase on finding them and maybe mark their file with a "gone away" record.

Thanks! I'll definitely do that.

The bigger concern is that this is a mortgage arrears letter for my property.

binerds81

You should be safe in the knowledge that Barclays/woolwich has no charge on the property but I'd be tempted to write to them to say that there is no one else living there and no other lender other than your own has a charge against the property, and that you would like them to reply back to confirm that they are aware of this and will not send any more correspondence to your address. just so that you have peace of mind that they will have to deal with this themselves without causing you worry!