Can the tenants make any claim against us if the house is repossessed whilst they are still in it? I have read that Uk finances have no bearing on Aus credit. Believe me not that we have any desires to take credit again for as long as we can help it. But we be expected I declare anything if we did. I will have a read through those links tomorrow as they probably answer this question but also wondering if debt collectors can hassle you at/through your place of work. Thanks again, has been really helpful reading your replies.

Thanks for responding and interesting to read. Has prompted more questions though. Yes the house is in joint names, so that means the 2 of us would have to go bankrupt. Is it likely that the mortgage company would make us bankrupt as that is the largest amount, so £1000 to them would not be so much by comparison? or would they just view the 'debt' as the negative equity once they have the house. Also we have an overdraft and credit card with one bank. Would they view these debts jointly or sepearately? Would a debt collector even buy the debt if they have little chance of retrieving it in Aus? Our cars are over £1000 each. One only just, the other is about £5000.... but cars are that much more expensive over here. They probably wouldn't even be on the road in the UK both 1990s cars. My worry would be horror storys of 'heavys' do these people really exist? are we going to be coming home to smashed windows or being beaten up on the doorstep?

Hello, I am new to the forum. I have been reading though previous posts doing some research as I am pre-empting a difficult situation on our horizon. Hoping some of you may be able to give us advice on how best to deal with things if and when they occur. We have been living in Australia for almost a year. Before moving we had our house for sale for a year but unfortunately it didn’t sell so we had to rent it out. The rental income does not cover the mortgage but after months of negotiating, the mortgage company agreed we could change to interest only payments for 12 months. However after this time has passed we will be back to a monthly shortfall of over £100. Of course we knew all this before we left and had things gone smoothly we would have managed to upkeep things. However our first tenants went bankrupt, stopped paying us and consequently our payments with the mortgage company were missed too. We tried our best to find what we could but it is now the account is £3500 in arrears. Fortunately the tenants left at the end of the 6 months tenancy without any fuss and new tenants moved in the next day. The new tenants are paying in full and on time BUT they are flexing their muscles in unnerving ways. Looooong story won’t trouble you with the details but the essence of which is they have made numerous tenancy breaches, are refusing to let us advertise the property as for sale and we highly expect that at the end of their tenancy they will not leave. The property management company is has advised us to prepare ourselves as things are looking ‘messy.’ So it’s positive that rent is being paid but we will still have the shortfall, are unable to even try to sell the house and potentially have squatters. If this does happen we would have to take them to court to get them out and we do not have the money to do this. Also these arrears are still outstanding and we have no means to pay them and we are getting threats of repossession. If the house was repossessed I understand the mortgage company would sell the house for whatever they can get for us leaving us with the outstanding (negative equity) debt + fees. I don’t know how we could afford that. In the UK we also have debts of about £16,000 across credit cards, overdrafts and loans. If this were to happen we would have to declare ourselves bankrupt in the UK, but I guess my first question is can we do this from Aus? We have no financial assets left but I understand in bankruptcy they will take your possessions. Will they take our cars from us in Aus. Not that they are highly valuable – just A to B’ers but thats exactly it, without our cars we cannot get to work. In the back of my mind I am also thinking do we declare ourselves bankrupt before it even comes to that to save us the stress of these tenants and the problems they are causing us. I struggle to see a positive outcome to this but I am hoping that somebody out there may have a different viewpoint and see something that we don’t. Maybe we are just bogged down with all the negativity that we cannot see the way out. Also if anybody knows of a company that specialises in dealing with international debt I would be very interested to hear. Thanks so much.