Coast Finance / Welcome Finance - Secured loan

MadKit

Good morning, needing advice here as going round in circles.

I have an offer on my house and have printed off the orders against the property. I've managed (hopefully) to sort out the ones I knew nothing about and look like interim charging orders but left with original secured loan from Welcome Finance (2004). The copy has no signature from them, no figures, absolutely no information at all on what is owing. There is just an entry that Coast Finance have taken over and the official copy of the buyout by Coast of Welcome Finance obligations. My address is one on over 25 pages of addresses (so many people in the same position). Coast Finance address is in Luxembourg, they only seem to have PO Box in the UK. They haven't contacted me for some time now and even the letters before had no information on what was owing. My solicitor has said he needs to pay these orders before giving me the money from the house sale (still early days so couple of months to sort out).

What do I do now? I know when I asked for CCA request from Welcome, they only came up with the same bad quality copy with no figures or signature on their part. If I ask the same CCA and SAR from Coast Finance Solutions, I am sure they will come up with the same bad copy. However, is it worth doing this? Clearly my solicitor will have no idea what needs to be paid and to who, I'm worried they will come up with some outrageous amount. Help needed please.

fatbelly

If this is showing as a charge, then your solicitor has to deal with it.

Tell him/her that you want to see a breakdown of the calculation before it gets paid

MadKit

Thanks @fatbelly but solicitor has already told me I have to deal with this! I was pretty shocked but he said his only job is to pay the money before handing it over. How that is going to work, I don't know as there is no information at all. Surely he would not just pay over if they didn't come with the agreement (reconstituted or not)?

fatbelly

Strange behaviour from your solicitor. Presumably he/she means 'this is going to take a long time and I charge £200 per hour' or ' you are asking me to do something I don't specialise in'

Even so, you want to see a breakdown of the figure before you give it to him. You have contact details for Coast. Will they not give you a figure?

It sounds like you are thinking that you want to challenge the enforceability of the loan. Is that correct? A conveyancing solicitor is not going to have the specialist knowledge needed. 

It is also going to take a lot of time and involve another solicitor who will want paying. You are going to have to weigh up the pros and cons here, and getting a settlement figure from Coast is the first thing

FWIW I do remember some unenforceability problems with Welcome from say 2000-2005

peb

You need to provide sufficient information to your lawyer so that they can get a redemption statement.   They won't be digging if they can't easily get a statement - if they agree to do I would expect additional costs.

Can't comment re fatbelly's post other than to agree that challenging the charge isn't part of a conveyancer's remit