HL interactive/Santander **SUSPENDED**

[scorpio stu]

Hi,

I looking for some advice but understand the answers may be speculative.

Here goes.

I am employed

Wife is self employed

For the past two years my wife has been self employed as a mortgage broker,yes she went self employed as the market crashed and has struggled on for two years. Because of this her credit rating is shot and is now unable to get a job in the financial industry as no one will touch her.

Our mortgage is £338,000 plus £16,000 arrears. We are on a fixed rate and the monthly payment is £1788. We have been unable to pay that amount for quite some time as we also have other expenses with 3 children.

Our house is in litigation and HL interactive are dealing with it.They said that they are only allowed to accept one payment plan offer which was the full mortgage payment without any on top arrears being paid off yet. We were unable to keep to that arrangement and have been paying around £1000 into the mortgage each month.Obviously this is showing up as a broken arrangement. We have no family or friends that are in a position to help and we have had the house up for sale at a reduced rate for the past 3 months with no offers. On December the 2nd our mortgage fixed rate finishes and we go to the variable rate.This means our mortgage is going to go from £1788.00 at 6.4% down to 4.24% and an approximate monthly payment of around £1150. This is going to mean the difference of being able to keep our home or lose it.

Srry I'm waffling on a bit but very stressed out.

What I am asking is that we would be able to manage paying around £1400 into the mortgage so that means approx £1150 into the loan and £250 off the arrears which means IF everything stayed te same a 5 year payment plan would need to be agreed as £16000 arrears at £250 per month equals 5 years. We also have one other secured loan with Welcome finance,we are also in arrears with that and now pay £180 per month to them. We have approximately £30,000 of unsecured debt that is gradually going down . Am I clutching at straws to save our mortgage or do you think its possible. I have been in contact with the civil service benevolent fund and they have someone contacting me Monday to sort the debt out. Thanks for listening and sorry for waffling. Stuart

[newstarter]

Hi scorpio well you have come to the right place.The situation is a bit of a mess at the moment so lets break things down into smaller peices for want of a better phrase.Firstly mortgage payment is currently 1788 and on december the 2nd goes down to 1150 so a decrease of 638 and the arrears is 16000 so 250 a month extra over 5 yrs would be job done and still leaves you 388 to play with.Iam assuming there is a possession order on your home or the lender is going to court to apply for one,so heres what you need to do,firstly pay as much as you can this month,that clears the way for decembers fall in rate,secondly you need to contact your lender to agree a new payment plan.There is a court ruling that allows for arrears to be paid over the full term of the mortgage ie norgen ruling but first you must concentrate on paying this months payment first before you take the next step

[newstarter]

Others will be along soon to help you,you wont be on your own,just try to concentrate on the mortgae payment for november at the moment as it is your priority debt,could you post a little more info about any impending legal action with regard to your property thats going on at the moment,the clearer the picture the better.

[scorpio stu]

Thanks for the quick replies.

The solicitors letter I received this morning:

We hereby give you notice that it is now our intention to commence possesion proceedings in the county court on behalf of our client after 15 business days from the date of this letter (9th November).

Arrears amount £15619.75

 

Thats basically it bar the usual jargon. I called them today and they said that it wasn't 15 business days it was 15 days but I'm not sure that makes a difference anyway. If it goes to court before December we will not be in possesion of a confirmed new rate and payment amount from Santander as I spoke to them as well today and was told we would not receive a letter with those details until the begining of December or the end of November.

Thanks for any help.

I have also set up a standing order for £1400 this month to pay into the mortgage. As regard to a new payment plan Santander will not speak to me regarding that and have been told that I can only speak to the solicitors now. Also I cannot set up a new payment plan until we get the new rate reduction as otherwise I will be offereing less than the normal monthly payment as it stands at the moment..Does that make sense ?

[scorpio stu]

The monthly new figure I quoted is an approximate one so may change slightly.

[newstarter]

Right thanks for that info so as yet you have no possession order on your property,good.You will be sent notification of a court date for the hearing,you will need to put forward a payment plan to both your lender and if not accepted the judge at the possession hearing,it will involve income and expenditure and an arrears payment plan going forward,this really is worth fighting for and you have a good chance of saving your home.ELL-enn is the person you need to be in touch with over this,i think she will be on here tommorrow,if you cant reach her one of the site team will flag this up,you are going to need her help but be positive i have seen people with larger arrears amounts than you keep their homes.

[scorpio stu]

The payment plan you are talking about will not be a problem but as I said Santander will not talk to me so do I just send it to the solicitors ?

I have been told it will be a county court and the paperwork will go to my nearest one.

Thanks again

[scorpio stu]

Can I submit a payment plan without having the new rate and ammount confirmed,will the solicitors just not say it is below what the monthly mortgage amount is at the moment ?

 

Can I get reply notifications on email,it doesn't seem to be working ?

[newstarter]

Your payment plan can be submitted to your solicitors so they can present it to Santander as the rate decreases in December i would be stating that the repayment plan would begin then in any case even if it did go to court a repayment plan would not begin till then anyway.

[newstarter]

Another thing i forgot to add is that if santander,s solicitors reject your repayment of arrears plan and still go to court it would be for the judge to decide if your payment plan is acceptable not santander or their solicitors,my guess is with you being in full employment the judge would suspend the order anyway .

[scorpio stu]

Thats helpful thank you.

I'll get that done this weekend and send it in on Monday.

[newstarter]

Glad to help in any way i can, remember concentrate on the main priority debt first,your mortgage,set about this situation one debt at a time,remember your half way through November already so that decrease in mortgage rate is just around the corner as i have already said,any payment plan would or could not feasabley start till December anyway.You can prove that you can pay off the arrears at 250 per month on top of the normal monthly payment,i can,t see a judge granting full possession im sure it will be suspended and my guess is the lenders solicitors would know this,be careful not to offer more than you can afford,this is a common mistake which people make when putting forward a plan to pay off arrears.forward your offer to the lenders solicitors if they try to scare you into paying more off the arrears than you can afford,then go to the possession hearing and put your offer to the judge,as crazy as it sounds,going to court can be the best thing that can happen,income and expenditure your payment plan going forward,get those two things completed then send them to the lenders solicitor and take it from there.

[scorpio stu]

A quick update.

Our mortgage rate changes on the 1st December and going to go dowm £1788 down to around the £1200 mark. Spoken to the soliocitor and they said as long as they are inpossesion of the letter from Santander regarding the rate change.

[newstarter]

Im surprised a big high st lender like Santander will not talk to you directly i know it does not break any conditions set out in the pre mortgage protocol but it does make things slightly more difficult because of the poor communication between lenders and their representitives sureley they have a collections dept which you could have talked to,"what are these people like",anyway ok so the payments go down to roughly 1200 pm which is a difference of nearly 600 pounds and their reps want proof of this from santander,"why dont they just bloody ask them lol" see what i mean by making things difficult!!!!!! okay then possession proceedings will not start till the end of the month anyway so you still have time to reach an agreement with their reps you need to chase up this payment reduction letter quickly,in fact santander should have sent you the letter by now,so chase that up for a start.

[scorpio stu]

Thanks for that. I have chased Santander every day,they don't seem to appreciate that this is the difference between keeping the house and losing it. They know what the rate will come down to but I am the one doing the chasing. If it doesn't arrive today I will call them again and again until it does. Makes my blood boil.

I do feel more upbeat about things and I just hope it works the wway we want it to. With regard to our other debts we have a company coming Tomorrow night supplied by the civil service benevolent fund through work who have been great. It's a free service and hopefully we can get something sorted there as well.

Fingers crossed please everyone that this may all be going in the right direction.

Thanks again for all your help.

[newstarter]

Thats good news,always good to have someone in your corner so to speak,keep chasing that rate reduction letter although i have a sneaky feeling Santander,s reps woulld already know of the rate reduction as they would be in possession of your file and as such would be able to log into your account from their office,anyway phone calls everyday to your lender,you want that letter as soon as possible.

[scorpio stu]

Well I have now recieved an email back from the solicitors stating : Santander will not accept a lower payment. They will only acceptthe full mortgage payment (which will be £1251) plus £650 per month extra to clear the arrears within a 24 month period.

My reply to them was : Obviously if I could pay that sort of figure a month then I wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. I feel it is anacceptable to say that is the only offer they will accept. I am sure there was a ruling that the bank could accept the full mortgage payment and spread the remainder of the arrears over the term of the mortgage which is another 18 years.

I feel like this has pu us back to square one again and not sure where to go from here. We have still not recieved the letter of the new rate from Santander.

[scorpio stu]

I have seen somewhere on the net (and I wish I had printed it or saved it but stupidly didn't) , something regarding the name jorgen or something similar vs a bank/building society stating a judge ruled that the mortgage arrears could be paid over the remainder of the term. I now can't find it anywhere,has anyone else heard of this ?

[scorpio stu]

Just found it :Cheltenham & Gloucester v Norgan :

Apparently this means the judge can allow the arrears to be paid off over the remainder of the mortgage term ? Is this still a possibility.

[newstarter]

Hi there Stu the norgen ruling which still stands and is used in many repo hearings hearings was a judgment that centred on two parts,the first part involves what money is due,and the second part refers to what can be defined as a reasonable time to pay what is due,you see lenders had always argued that the sum due when a default has taken place was the whole sum of the mortgage and any arears should be payed back over a term of not more than 4 years,the apeal court judges in the norgen case ruled that the sum due can only be the amount that would have been paid had no default occured they further ruled that the starting point for paying back sums due ie arrears should be the term that the mortgage has left to run,this is statute and as i have already said is often sited during repo hearings.

[newstarter]

Right for a start they are breaking mortgage pre action protocols (these are measures the lender should have taken before the comencement of court action to agree a soloution with the borrower) for instance,moving the payment date,considering extending the mortgage term,deffering payments to name a few,Santander are not complying with the protocol which a judge would expect before action took place in a court.

[newstarter]

650 pound a month on top of your normal payment !!!!!!!!!!! they have to be having a laugh,look tell them you will see them in court we can prepare a defence if need be no judge in the land would force you to pay that stu,they are trying it on big time as i said earlier,scare tactics.

[newstarter]

Heres the way i would go with this ,pay the normal payment,1251 plus the 250 you have already offered to pay,off the arrears,if Sander,s reps dont like it take it to court,i know i would,you will get all the help you need on this forum.

[scorpio stu]

Thanks,I'll put that to the solicitor.

[newstarter]

Santanders reps said they would apply for a possession order somewhere around the 25th so i couldnt see a hearing before the middle of December at the earliest that gives you plenty of time to prepare a defence if they dont play ball.Im amazed they asked for such high payments off the arrears,my guess is they think you dont know that there are other options open to you,repeat your offer to them and as i have already said if they dont accept take this to court and defend the application.