Kensington Mortgages

catie09

If anyone were thinking of going with Kensington Mortgages please don't, we had a horrible experience with them.
They are alright whilst you are paying your monthly payment but when you don't.....
My husband had to retire from work in July as his cancer had returned and he could no longer do his job. He was past retirement age so he could get his pension. Unfortunately we still had 3 years left on our mortgage. We could no longer afford the £1000.00 plus per month repayment so the plan was to sell the house as quickly as we could and buy something cheaper outright. I phoned Kensington and asked if we could do interest only payments until the house is sold they said no they wanted all our incomes and outgoings, plus proof the house was on the market.
I sent them proof the house was on the market but there was no way we could afford the monthly repayment and something off the arrears. We got a buyer almost straight away then we started to look for something. All the time I was getting reminders that I had not paid the monthly payment and they could repossess. Bearing in mind our house was now sold - subject to contract for just over half a million and all we owed Kensington was £40,000.00 I was hoping for some leeway. I kept them in the loop but all they were interested in was their payment and our out goings they even wanted proof of my husbands cancer treatment. The sale was now going through solicitors but I was worried Kensington would repossess. There was such a lot of money tied up in this sale they would probably just sell as cheaply as they can so long as they get their money.
By Christmas I was told we had till January 5th or they would repossess. I asked my solicitor if they could do this she said unfortunately yes as the contracts have not been exchanged yet. There was a hold up with the solicitor of the house we were buying she had some issues to iron out. On top of all this our buyers were threatening to pull out of the sale as it seemed to have dragged on for such a long time.
I phoned Kensington again and told the woman I spoke to we should be out of the house by 11th January. She said I have until January 9th for my solicitor to get a redemption statement to therm (we couldn't complete until this happened) The statement was sent on January 7th.
To cut a long story short we exchanged on 10th January and completed and moved out on January 11th. It wasn't ideal and was very stressful.
That wasn't the end though when we got to the new house we got a letter from Kensington(our mail was redirected) saying we owed them just over £4000.00. That they would repossess blah blah blah. I thought what....!! I phoned them and asked why I got this letter and that the whole mortgage should have been paid off by our solicitor. No one seemed to know why and I was put on hold then cut off. I phoned back later and spoke to someone sensible at last I was angry she said it was a cross over and we did not owe them anything I think she was embarrassed. We have heard no more.
They are very difficult to deal with whilst you are paying fine but as soon as you have problems not so good.
I wouldn't recommend these to any one.
By the way we didn't go with them originally we were put with them when our mortgage company went broke.
Sorry for the long post, if you are not asleep by now you have reached the end lol.

Thrugelmir

Sorry to hear about your stressfull experience. Put it behind you. Hope that your husbands treatment has gone well.

Lenders are a business. People working for them aren't unsympathetic. They are just doing their jobs. You'd be surprised how many people fib about their personal circumstances. When times get difficult.