please help! worried sick!

wot_a_life

In reply to hubby earning 4k a month, he is SE and that is his top line WHEN he can find it. We have been managing by ways of when he does earn this much, we catch up with debt payments and mortgage payments etc, he doesn't earn it every month (wish he did, we wouldn't be here then!) Because the work just isn't out there at the moment, we are slipping again and are struggling with the mortgage repayments, hence the 2k arrears.

The sell your home chap told us he would give us 184k for the house, this was at the end of last year and at one time we decided against it, but now we are struggling again, it seems not such a bad idea.

We had "your move" value the house last week at £199.950, it needs quite alot of work doing to it so we were quite taken aback at this. She also said, for a quick sale they would advertise it for offers over 185k, so the figures seem to add up there.

I thought that if the house had a charging order on it, then that said creditor would be paid first from the sale of the property after the mortgage lender?

We managed to accumilate 40k worth of debt, with 1 credit card, 3 store cards, and a business that went into liquidation in 2005, to which some of the debt was passed to us as it had accumilated before the business was a limited company.

To be honest, I am scared...........I want to clear the debts, make a fresh start, if that means walking away with no profit in the house then that's fine, I've learnt. At times, we can't afford to buy food, I now know what they mean when they say eat or heat.

wot_a_life

Had a really long chat with Debt line and spoke to someone about the business debts. They sent me loads of literature out, and suggested that I declare bankruptcy or cease the payments on the business debts and let one of them bankrupt me to save me the cost of doing it.

Not a road I want to take, I would rather sell the house (if I can) pay some of the debt off to reduce the payment time scale and secure a home for the kids

But is renting secure????

TighterThanTwoCoatsOfPain

just imo, but if the £184k was back of last year, and Yourmove (and my local agent certainly values 'optimistically') now say 199k you can bet your boots their old offer no longer stands...

If thats the route you want to go down i suggest you get them out again for a current offer, brace yourself..

motch

TighterThanTwoCoatsOfPain wrote: »

just imo, but if the £184k was back of last year, and Yourmove (and my local agent certainly values 'optimistically') now say 199k you can bet your boots their old offer no longer stands...

If thats the route you want to go down i suggest you get them out again for a current offer, brace yourself..

just thinking the same thing. A lot has happened in the last few months

Snooze

wot_a_life wrote: »

But is renting secure????

In what sense? At the moment, in my humble opinion, renting is king but it depends how you view property. Those that argue that a house is a place to live long term would disagree and not give two hoots that their £300,000 house will be worth £2.50 in 5 years (or however long til market bottoms out) time.

If you do decide to try and sell your house then you need to move fast because once your creditor's apply for a charging order you'll have that option taken away (the creditor puts a 'caution' on the Land Registry).

I agree with the above 2 poster's about the valuation too. If you go back to that company that offered you £184k for it now, I bet a fresh offer would be more like £125k now (and I think even that could be on the generous side). You'll definitely need a chair to hand when they give you it, that's for sure!

Rob

wot_a_life

REALLY??????? OMG!!!

I've heared some horror stories about renting in the concept of the LL not paying the mortgage and the property being repossesed from under you, and also, initially, you sign a 6 month agreement, well, that's how it works here, then after the 6 months, the LL will extend or terminate

southernscouser

wot_a_life wrote: »

Thanks for replying,

Yes we have tried remortgaging, but we can't get anything lower than we already have, probably due to the fact that my husband has 4 ccj's against him

Our current lender is less than helpful and we have seen a financial advisor who has suggested that we get them to review the mortgage because it states that we paid 182k for it when we didn't, we paid 177k! 3 years ago, so it's all a huge mess at the moment, what with all the debts, (had bailiffs this week), and our quality of life is pants, we are just looking for a solution

OK here goes. Please don't take anything personally if it sounds harsh. Anything I might be 'accusing' you of I have done myself.

You have to change your lifestyle. Completely.

If you husband has 4 CCJ's already then you aren't likely to get another mortgage. So, rather than struggling to pay the mortgage but keeping up to date with your unsecured debts, turn it on it's head. Reduce payments (I'll come to that later) to your credit cards and unsecured loans.

Your priority debts and payments are;

Mortgage - I don't have to tell you you could lose your home
Council tax - You could go to prison
Food - You need to eat
Electric
Gas
Arrears

Now next I'd include water, however legally you are not allowed to be cut off, but your provider could limit your supply. Plus if you don't pay it you are only going to get in arrears.

Regarding your debts of £40,000 I'd guess that these are costing you £1,000 a month! :think: You could potentially reduce this to £150 or maybe lower by going on a DMP (debt management plan) with someone like the CCCS who are a registered charity and won't charge you a penny for their services.

You really need to get yourself over to the DFW board and post your SOA. We'll then be able to go through your spending with a fine tooth comb and advise you where you can and need to cutback. Sky will have to go, even if 'we never go out and it's all we do for entertainment' Tough. You can't afford it. If you smoke do yourself, your pockets and your kids a favour and give up. If you drink, save your liver. It's brutal. It's horrible. It's depressing. But your other alternative is to lose your home. If you want to keep it then you have to start living within your means. This means a total upheaval of the way you live your life. You can't afford to live the lifestyle you do.

The good news is you're not alone. There are many in your situation and many who have been in your situation and come through the other side. But you need to be prepared to make sacrifices.

You need to start by phoning the CCCS or looking at their website and going through the debt remedy situation.

Then you need to start a thread on the debt free wannabe board and be prepared to do whatever you can to fix this.

southernscouser

As for people saying sell up and start again, that's not a magic cure.

You got into debt because you lived beyond your means. All you will do is start living again beyond your means again and running up more debt. You have to change the way you live so your outgoings don't exceed your incomings. It sounds very obvious but if you haven't been doing this for god knows how many years it's hard to break the cycle.

Also, regards to unsecured debt being converted to secure debt within 5 minutes is frankly cobblers. Yes it is possible yet a CCCJ needs to be issued. If you start to address your debts , preferably through the CCCS then no reasonable judge will saction one. Yes you will default but this is totally different to a CCCJ as is a charging order.

This is why you need to speak to a professional debt advisor at the CCCS. No-one on this site is qualified to tell you what to do.

SquatNow

Bismarck wrote: »

This goes against what a lot of others have said elsewhere and against my understanding of priority payments...Please can you elaborate for my benefit (and others)

Few people realise what was changed when the new laws took effect in April 2006.

Basically in the old days the creditor used to have to go to the county court in order to get a charge put on your house, and then they had to give you extensive options in terms of repayment terms. You only lost your house if you still couldn't pay. Generally it was only worth them doing it for debys oveer £20k due to the time and cost involved.

Under the new system they print out a list of names/addresses/amounts, fill out a one page form, staple them together, and get them stamped at your local magistrates court by the clerk of the court. Then they can immediately get your salary garnishes and if they wish, force the immediate (well after 30 days) sale of your house.

Basically what happened is aout 2 years ago the bank "threatened" to do the credit crunch. The government panicked, and caved in. With banks able to easily turn all unsecured lending into loans secured on people home (which thanks to rampant HPI now had pots and pots of equity) the banks were happy to leave the credit taps running, since a borrowers £5k credit card debt is now secured (effectively) against the £50k equity in their house.

The best bit for the banks is that while the debt is, for all intensse purposes, secured on the persons home, they still get to charge an "unsecured" loan rate.

It's a topic that really needs to be talked about far more.

Bf109

SquatNow wrote: »

It's a topic that really needs to be talked about far more.

Thanks for that interesting titbit. Do you have a link?