No Longer Cope. Repossession Surplus Waive Rights

t_in_atrance

Moderator. Please can moderators help, I'm despairing of this well-known high street mortgage lender. Apologies for such a long post.



I've not found any posts on this question:

Following repossession, our house was sold by the lender and there was a large surplus. According to the info on Land Registry the buyer paid on 20th November. They did not contact us to say a final offer had been accepted or that the sale had completed. Now the lender will not give us a full breakdown of the deductions or copies of invoices although we've requested these. I know the figures quoted as the mortgage are bunkum (a very long story).


After we contacted the lender & solicitor, they sent us a "receipt" to sign saying they suggest the surplus be shared 50 / 50 between ourselves and the lender and that we would need to sign to say we were happy with this, and to sign away our rights to make any other claim against them. Only when they received this signed document would they pay us any surplus. We informed them that this was not a "receipt" and that we would not sign away our rights. This is blatent coercion and blackmail, surely. I think if we sign it, it will be difficult to get out of - as I believe such an individual specific "term" isn't treated the same as ordinary contract Ts&Cs as far as unfairness is concerned.



Their latest threat is that they will pay the money into court as it's in dispute, and that it will cause a great deal of delay - more blackmail - they've said they can do this after 42 days if no agreement is reached. I don't think they can do this as there's no court order relating to the surplus & no money order - the surplus is the sum after all the costs/fees/mortgage, so I don't see that any of the 3 options mentioned at CPR 36/37 apply.


We're utterly desperate for money - we both have health issues and since they made us homeless in July our benefits are all up in the air - housing benefit hasn't been pd in relation to our current tenancy, so now they are threatening repossession; Council tax & utilities all in arrears; and we're about to lose all the belongings we managed to retrieve and put in storage (we had to abandon a lot of belongings in the house) because those payments are so far in arrears - they're going to sell it. We'll have lost absolutely everything we ever owned, and it's killing me.



We haven't had the strength to deal with this all along but no-one will help us because technically we have "capital". Before eviction the money/debt helpline referred us to national debt-line who referred us to Shelter. Shelter would only deal with the homelessness bit nothing outside that - the contract / Ts&Cs. (we've no dependants so not priority anyway). Legal Aid said we were not entitled to representation or Aid - just a phone chat.



I tried to deal with this myself - but failed. Every knock-back is devistating. I have a write-up, most of the letters already in a document, but we're mentally paralysed under the strain. We can't function - I almost never leave the house & my husband only leaves to get food shopping. It's unbearable.


Please will someone look at my letters & documents. Would Martin take up our cause - which relates to much more than just the recent events mentioned above.

[Deleted User]

t_in_atrance wrote: »

Moderator. Please can moderators help, I'm despairing of this well-known high street mortgage lender. Apologies for such a long post.



I've not found any posts on this question:

Following repossession, our house was sold by the lender and there was a large surplus. According to the info on Land Registry the buyer paid on 20th November. They did not contact us to say a final offer had been accepted or that the sale had completed. Now the lender will not give us a full breakdown of the deductions or copies of invoices although we've requested these. I know the figures quoted as the mortgage are bunkum (a very long story).


After we contacted the lender & solicitor, they sent us a "receipt" to sign saying they suggest the surplus be shared 50 / 50 between ourselves and the lender and that we would need to sign to say we were happy with this, and to sign away our rights to make any other claim against them. Only when they received this signed document would they pay us any surplus. We informed them that this was not a "receipt" and that we would not sign away our rights. This is blatent coercion and blackmail, surely. I think if we sign it, it will be difficult to get out of - as I believe such an individual specific "term" isn't treated the same as ordinary contract Ts&Cs as far as unfairness is concerned.



Their latest threat is that they will pay the money into court as it's in dispute, and that it will cause a great deal of delay - more blackmail - they've said they can do this after 42 days if no agreement is reached. I don't think they can do this as there's no court order relating to the surplus & no money order - the surplus is the sum after all the costs/fees/mortgage, so I don't see that any of the 3 options mentioned at CPR 36/37 apply.


We're utterly desperate for money - we both have health issues and since they made us homeless in July our benefits are all up in the air - housing benefit hasn't been pd in relation to our current tenancy, so now they are threatening repossession; Council tax & utilities all in arrears; and we're about to lose all the belongings we managed to retrieve and put in storage (we had to abandon a lot of belongings in the house) because those payments are so far in arrears - they're going to sell it. We'll have lost absolutely everything we ever owned, and it's killing me.



We haven't had the strength to deal with this all along but no-one will help us because technically we have "capital". Before eviction the money/debt helpline referred us to national debt-line who referred us to Shelter. Shelter would only deal with the homelessness bit nothing outside that - the contract / Ts&Cs. (we've no dependants so not priority anyway). Legal Aid said we were not entitled to representation or Aid - just a phone chat.



I tried to deal with this myself - but failed. Every knock-back is devistating. I have a write-up, most of the letters already in a document, but we're mentally paralysed under the strain. We can't function - I almost never leave the house & my husband only leaves to get food shopping. It's unbearable.


Please will someone look at my letters & documents. Would Martin take up our cause - which relates to much more than just the recent events mentioned above.

This is a link to your previous thread to give some more background information:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5991570/1992-mortgage-repossession-mess

The MSE forum doesn't have moderators anymore and Martin Lewis sold the MSE website back in 2012.

I think your options are to accept the mortgage lender's offer, to find a solicitor willing to take your case on which will mean paying for their service, or maybe going down the formal complaint route with the lender and escalating to the regulator (not that I'm saying you have a case against the lender).

haras_nosirrah

In the original thread you were advised to just get the house sold and then you would avoid repossession as the costs of this is expensive.

It is a shame you didn't do this as a lot of this may have been avoided.

How much was you outstanding mortgage, how much were the arrears (as I believe you stopped paying), how much did it sell for and how much are they saying they will give you?

silvercar

Looking at your previous thread, this is not a repossession because you built arrears, but because the mortgage had run its term and even with an extension you didn’t pay it off.

The calculation as to what you get back is fairly simple in broad terms:

Sale price less their costs in repossession less mortgage owed less any arrears on the mortgage payments.

Their costs in repossession will include their legal costs, selling costs including estate agents fees and any penalties set out in the original mortgage offer.

It should be fairly easy to work out roughly what you should get back.

Post some figures if you want some help with this. Once you know if you are getting most of what you are owed you can decide your tactics for getting anything mot paid.

If you are desperate for the money you can sign something “under duress” and still pursue. An ombudsman isn’t going to take kindly to a lender bullying a customer in poor health if that is found to be the case.

enthusiasticsaver

As silver car says surely you just need to know the outstanding mortgage balance which should have been declared at the repossession hearing, the costs and sale price. That will give you the surplus. I have never heard of a lender asking to share any surplus. They normally just take sufficient to cover the mortgage and costs. Complain to the Financial ombudsman service to see what they say.

Given though you are desperate for money and regardless of your health issues have not dealt with this very well I think I would be inclined to take the offer so you at least have some money. Taking out an interest only mortgage with no plan to repay and not selling it in the first place when it was obvious you could not afford repayments were serious mistakes and have cost you so much both in stress and money. I am not sure why you think the lender is so at fault when it seems they gave you opportunities to deal with it even when your mortgage term had expired.

As others said there are no moderators on this site and if you are not happy to accept the offer the lender has made you then you need a solicitor who will take it on. In the meantime though all this procrastination is causing problems with your current tenancy. Presumably you are not working so don't you get council tax support? I do feel sorry for you but you have not helped yourself by letting it get to this stage. Have you no relative or friend who could help you if your health is making it difficult for you to deal with your finances?

haras_nosirrah

I am guessing that the op is complaining about the extent of the charges.
If the lender is a regular high street bank rather than an adverse lender they aren't going to be making stuff up. Unfortunately if the account has gone bad there will be charges relating to that and these charges can be high.

From reading both threads the timeline seems to be
Took out interest only mortgage with an endowment
Gets ill and cancels endowment so now no repayment vehicle
Benefits pay the interest only mortgage
Mortgage term ends and lender wants their money back. Op cannot pay but given 18 months to sell
Benefits stop paying the mortgage as the mortgage term ended
Rather than sell op decides to look to see if they can get out on a technicality due to her original bank merging with a new bank
I am assuming during this time the mortgage wasn't paid as benefits had ceased but I may have this wrong.
Lender comes to end of new extension and house still not sold so they go for repossession.
Relationship with bank has completely broken down so bank no longer willing to discuss with op directly but only via solicitors. All this time costs are building.

While I have every sympathy with the op as ill health is terrible and can make things a lot more difficult it is very unlikely that they have a separate way of dealing with your repossession than everyone else's. Take the money they are offering now but if you like it it be know what it is under duress and that you want a full breakdown of how the figure was arrived at.

Had you sold either before the term came up or within the grace period a lot of this could have been avoided. There comes a time where dealing with things and moving forward is better than trying to take on the system and find a technicality. If your other benefits are affected and rent unpaid you could end up in a worse situation with another eviction to deal with. Take the money, lodge a complaint if they refuse to provide figures and take it to the ombudsman if you must but don't end up homeless again when you can do something to prevent it now.

t_in_atrance

Whether or not we sign the bank's blackmail document I hope MSE / Martin will take up our cause - the lender knew they were presenting a false contract with unsupportable demands for money, and they've applied ordinarily unbearable tactics on people they know to be mentally fragile. That's our opinion of course.

To clarify :

The contract documents the lender presented to court were incomplete, they ommited 2 pages - we thought our copies lost/destroyed years ago but then found them just too late. With those pages, and with Unfair terms 1977 applied, they had no right to add any charges / fees etc so they had no right to evict us. They just will not provide details to justify the amount they say is owing because they cannot.



They've been hiding this for years and we tried subject access requests, which they have dragged out with limp excuses and only sent a few pages.From ICO we got the usual 1st stage knock-back (despite the evidence of the correspondence) so appeal or court action needed.



Despite them knowing we were already suffering from depression, over the last few years they've been "playing" with us, misinforming and lying to us, not answering properly/ ignoring queries. For 3 years they've been trampling all over us and wearing us down knowing we're an easy ideal target and would find it difficult or impossible to get help, with an inability to cope with pressure, or do things for ourselves. This has been a sustained cold calculated strategy by them, not just to apply strain and pressure on people to get them to comply - but to do this to people they know full well may crack up completely and top themselves. A great outcome for them, no-one to ask questions or follow things up, all cases dropped.

t_in_atrance

haras_nosirrah wrote: »

In the original thread you were advised to just get the house sold and then you would avoid repossession as the costs of this is expensive.

It is a shame you didn't do this as a lot of this may have been avoided.

How much was you outstanding mortgage, how much were the arrears (as I believe you stopped paying), how much did it sell for and how much are they saying they will give you?

Thank you for taking the time to respond.
The effects of depression and lender obstruction on top of that made it impossible - mentally and physically paralysing.
T

t_in_atrance

Lover_of_Lycra wrote: »

This is a link to your previous thread to give some more background information:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5991570/1992-mortgage-repossession-mess

The MSE forum doesn't have moderators anymore and Martin Lewis sold the MSE website back in 2012.

I think your options are to accept the mortgage lender's offer, to find a solicitor willing to take your case on which will mean paying for their service, or maybe going down the formal complaint route with the lender and escalating to the regulator (not that I'm saying you have a case against the lender).

Thanks for taking time out to look at this.
I wasn't aware that Martin had sold up - his face and name are still being used.


The lender will not answer queries properly, are evasive and will not comply fully with GDPR requests. We'd have to take them to court - see my later additional post.

Thanks T.

t_in_atrance

haras_nosirrah wrote: »

I am guessing that the op is complaining about the extent of the charges.
If the lender is a regular high street bank rather than an adverse lender they aren't going to be making stuff up. Unfortunately if the account has gone bad there will be charges relating to that and these charges can be high.

From reading both threads the timeline seems to be
Took out interest only mortgage with an endowment
Gets ill and cancels endowment so now no repayment vehicle
Benefits pay the interest only mortgage
Mortgage term ends and lender wants their money back. Op cannot pay but given 18 months to sell
Benefits stop paying the mortgage as the mortgage term ended
Rather than sell op decides to look to see if they can get out on a technicality due to her original bank merging with a new bank
I am assuming during this time the mortgage wasn't paid as benefits had ceased but I may have this wrong.
Lender comes to end of new extension and house still not sold so they go for repossession.
Relationship with bank has completely broken down so bank no longer willing to discuss with op directly but only via solicitors. All this time costs are building.

While I have every sympathy with the op as ill health is terrible and can make things a lot more difficult it is very unlikely that they have a separate way of dealing with your repossession than everyone else's. Take the money they are offering now but if you like it it be know what it is under duress and that you want a full breakdown of how the figure was arrived at.

Had you sold either before the term came up or within the grace period a lot of this could have been avoided. There comes a time where dealing with things and moving forward is better than trying to take on the system and find a technicality. If your other benefits are affected and rent unpaid you could end up in a worse situation with another eviction to deal with. Take the money, lodge a complaint if they refuse to provide figures and take it to the ombudsman if you must but don't end up homeless again when you can do something to prevent it now.

Thank you for looking at our case.

I need a break from all this - I'll come back later though.


T.

Thrugelmir

t_in_atrance wrote: »

Their latest threat is that they will pay the money into court as it's in dispute, and that it will cause a great deal of delay - more blackmail

Without dredging up the past. Personally I think you need to move on. There's no blackmail involved in letting a court decide the matter. Such action will simply cost you yet more money. With the added consequence of yet another period of time before you can start rebuilding your lives. Furthermore I suspect that your lender has totally run out of patience with you. Given that they've done nothing wrong. What you've cost the bank is far in excess of the actual charges levied.

Take their offer while it's on the table. The only loser going forward is you.