Handing back the keys to escape

vid811

Hi all,

This might be an unusual one.

I'm in a shared ownership property that I need to get out of. Mostly, this is for my own wellbeing after having to deal with the housing associations appalling service for 7 years.

I'm trying to sell it but doubt it will sell due to ongoing leaks and damage that has been ever present since moving in. It's driven me to look at drastic action simply to get on with my life.

I'm not in debt, have a well paid job, have a decent amount of equity and yet all I want to do is give the keys to the lender, forfeit the equity and walk away.

Is there anything actually stopping me from doing this and what would be the repercussions of doing so. I am prepared to start from scratch.

Thanks

bryanb

Doing as you suggest will not cancel your mortgage.

ACG

Why not put it up in an auction? 
If you hand the keys back you have to stop paying the mortgage otherwise they wont repossess. That means you end up with missed mortgage payments, it will take months to go through possibly even a year. 

Put it in an auction. Put a reserve on there of how much you would willingly accept (ie say the mortgage is £100k and you would be prepared to put in £10k to get a clean slate) then the reserve would be £90k. 

When the hammer comes down, they have 28 days to complete. Theoretically you could be done by the end of august if there was an auction in the next few days - unlikely. But it will be a lot quicker than handing the keys back. 

user1977

No such thing as a property which can't be sold, at the right price. If you have a decent amount of equity, why can't you market it at a suitably low price?

"Handing back the keys" isn't really a thing, given the lender never had the keys in the first place...all they can do is sell the property, and you'll still be liable for any shortfall if the achieved price is less than the mortgage balance plus all of their costs.

silvercar

Most sensible option is to speak to a local estate agent and get them to price it to sell. That should mean it moves quite quickly.

another option is to contact your lender and ask if they will do an assisted sale, basically means they take control of the selling process.

if you do post the keys back to the lender and stop mortgage payments it will be months before they take action. Eventually they will go through possession proceedings and sell the property and give you back equity less their massive costs.

Workerdrone

user1977 said:

No such thing as a property which can't be sold, at the right price. If you have a decent amount of equity, why can't you market it at a suitably low price?

"Handing back the keys" isn't really a thing, given the lender never had the keys in the first place...all they can do is sell the property, and you'll still be liable for any shortfall if the achieved price is less than the mortgage balance plus all of their costs.

I had a sort of similar position many years ago in what I now refer to as "A different life". I had a wife who ran up some enormous debts in my name. She did very well to keep them hidden until the bailiffs started knocking. As we ran a business together (Which wasn't doing too well) I took other employment working abroad just to try and pay to mortgage. She was siphoning that money off as soon as it hit the account and not paying the mortgage. By the time I came back to the country there were repossession proceedings in place. We both moved out into her parents. I took a menial job just to try and pay some money to the bank. She started an affair and I moved back home.

She chose to move back into the house I was trying to sell which made viewings very difficult and kept telling the bank she was intending to buy me out. I knew by this point it wasn't going to happen and the arrears would just increase so I spoke with the court and the mortgage company with a view to rushing through repossession proceedings to get her out. Possession went through and the mortgage company eventually sold it for 40k below asking price wiping out my 40k equity and putting me a further 12k in the hole on top of the 40k debt she'd ran up so total loss 92k.

Thing is they were very remiss on chasing this 12k debt. they had a few tries over the years. I think they sold the debt on, but after 12 years it hit the statute of limitations so thankfully I didn't need to pay it. I just focussed on clearing all my other debts.

As I say, a very long time ago, before I first read Martin Lewis's the money diet and happily changed my life around.

TheJP

vid811 said:

Hi all,

This might be an unusual one.

I'm in a shared ownership property that I need to get out of. Mostly, this is for my own wellbeing after having to deal with the housing associations appalling service for 7 years.

I'm trying to sell it but doubt it will sell due to ongoing leaks and damage that has been ever present since moving in. It's driven me to look at drastic action simply to get on with my life.

I'm not in debt, have a well paid job, have a decent amount of equity and yet all I want to do is give the keys to the lender, forfeit the equity and walk away.

Is there anything actually stopping me from doing this and what would be the repercussions of doing so. I am prepared to start from scratch.

Thanks

What sort of damage and leaks are we looking at here? My brother is currently in the process of buying a house which the EA said needs quite a bit of work regarding damp, leaks and other issues. He asked his plumber friend to come and check it all out, the usual if there are no leaks or ingress there will be no damp. He was able to determine the leaks based on the plumbing and the stains, told me brother budget high end £2k for the leaks, the other issues were a few damaged and missing tiles and and badly laid flagstone walkway to the front door and patio area. The house has great potential so he offered £5k less than asking and the seller bit his hand off.

*FYI he did have a survey following his friends inspection which confirmed leaks but not in the detail his friend was able to describe. 

Someone will buy your house for the right price, perhaps have your own survey commissioned which could help ease your anxiety in selling.

AMILLIONDOLLARS

Can you not sell your share back to the Housing Association?