Losing my home. :( (Help needed)

[adztec77]

Hi Guys,

 

I originally sought advice from this site about 6 years ago, suing the banks for charges and totally won which was brilliant. I'm back now, hoping some of the amazing folks on here will help me with my latest financial catastrophe.

 

I was made redundant in 2012 with a pay-off and during 2013 while struggling to find a new job we got into some payment difficulties with our mortgage which is £790 per month. We've been in contact with the mortgage company and have paid as much as we can but there were several thousand in arrears.

 

We made our payment in March (our normal amount) and today I started looking at mail and I have found that our bank, Santander has taken us to court and secured a repossession order. I'm so late to realise this, I have been working full time and trying to establish a part time business to earn as much money as I can, literally been killing myself with massive long hours of working, my wife is looking for work, but suffering from depression which is severely hindering her efforts and basically as we have been attacked from everywhere over debt every single day and struggling to pay stuff, we have tried to prioritise our payments but for a while there just stopped opening all these depressing envelopes - big mistake as I have just found out.

 

The long and the short is that I have been sent a letter that says the house will be repossessed on April 30th 2014. I feel stupid and I have massively screwed up.

 

If I throw up a red flag among my family and friends and ask for help, I am sure we can come up with the £4000 I owe to clear these arrears, my question, friends is am I too late to save my home?

 

Is there anything I can do at this late stage?

 

I'm so freaked out, I found out this morning and obviously I can't start making calls to try and find out what to do as it's Saturday so I am at my wits end. I have 2 children to support as well and my wife is really bad today and has been crying all day. I am severely worried about her doing something terrible.

 

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks all.

[Ell-enn]

Hi, if you are able to pay the arrears then you cannot be evicted. Is the letter with the date of 30th April an eviction notice or is it stating that's the possession date on the court order? if so, then nothing will happen on the 30th April - the lender will have to apply for an eviction order.

 

If it is an eviction order, you can apply to the court on an N244 form to get a hearing in front of a judge to stop the eviction - we can help you with this.

 

Once you let us know exactly what the letter says we can advise further.

[adztec77]

Hi Ell-enn, thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

 

I am going to see if I can amass £4k to cover the outstanding arrears but in the meantime, the letter I got today (12/04) is as follows:

 

================================

 

ORDER FOR POSSESSION

Maidstone County Court

 

On the 02 April 2014, District Judge Smith,

at the Maidstone County Court, The Law Courts, Barker Road, Maidstone, Kent ME16 8EQ

 

Upon hearing the solicitor for the claimant

 

and upon [MY NAME] not attending

 

and upon [MY WIFES NAME] not attending

 

This order has been made on discretionary ground and the court orders that

 

1. The defendant give the claimant possession of [MY ADDRESS] on or before 30 April 2014

2. There be judgement for £154970.46

 

The court has ordered you to leave the property by the date stated in paragraph 1 above. If you do not do so the claimant can ask the court, without a further hearing, to authorise a bailiff or High Court Enforcement Officer to evict you. (In that case, you can apply to the court to stay the eviction; a judge will decide if there are grounds for doing so.)

 

The claimant will send you a copy of the bill of costs with a notice telling you what to do if you object to this amount. If you do object, the claimant will ask the court to fix a hearing to assess the amount.

 

Payments should be made to the claimant, not to the court. If you need more information about making payments, you should contact the claimant. If you do not pay the money owed when it is due and the claimant takes steps to enforce payment, the order will be registered in the Register of Judgements, Orders and fines. This may make it difficult for you to get credit. For further information about registration is available in a leaflet which you can get from the county court office.

 

N26 Order for possession.

 

================================

[Ell-enn]

That's good, it's the judge's order from the possession hearing, not an eviction notice - so we have plenty of time to sort this out. Let us know if you are able to get money together - even if you can't get the full amount you can still save your home by applying to the court to have the eviction stopped.

[BornThisWay]

Adztec you are in very good hands with Ell-enn. Please don't be scared of this. I have been to court to defend an eviction notice at least 6 times over the last 5 years.

 

 

The judge does not want you to lose your home unless there is absolutely no other option.

 

 

As this is your first time (well actually you have not even had an eviction notice yet!) and since you can pay some of the arrears, as long as you let Ell-enn help you prepare your defence you should be absolutely fine.

 

 

Lenders have no reason not to try and kick you out if they can, but I can assure you that the judge will be on your side unless you ignore the matter. Get stuck in, defend your home, and I promise you, you will be okay!

[Bandit127]

You owe your wife an apology for burying your head in the sand on this. I cannot imagine you didn't know a court case was in process.

 

Santander will probably apply to evict you at some point after the 30th. You have to respond to this to avoid a forthwith judgement. Forthwith is unlikely, and with an appropriate repose you will get 28 days grace.

 

You may be lucky that the eviction hearing is many weeks after the 30th (it was about 6 weeks for me) - on the other hand you may not.

 

Either way, you need to pull your socks up and deal with this. Reliably and consistently.

[Lea_HTH]

Bandit127 the PO has a fixed date, 30th April 2014, so 'forthwith' has nothing to do with the OP's case. A forthwith judgment is given for a possession order, which means, on the day of the hearing, the possession order is given forthwith, which means the claimant can proceed straight to a warrant of execution and the bailiffs will issue a notice of eviction to the mortgagor.

 

The stage the OP is at, is that after 30th April, the mortgagee can apply to execute the warrant (without notice and no hearing will be required), and thereafter, depending on whether or not the mortgagee has applied for HCEO to carry out the eviction, or whether the court bailiffs will do it, the eviction could happen as little as a day after 30th April if carried out by HCEOs, or (and this is much more likely) an absolute minimum of one week if the court bailiffs do it...and, as most court bailiffs are busy and evict on an area basis, the OP might have as much as several weeks before they get around to it.

 

There is no such thing as an 'appropriate repose of 28 days grace' - the OP can apply for a stay of execution (as correctly stated by Ell-enn) and make an arrangement to pay the CMI plus something towards the arrears. And there is no such thing as an 'eviction hearing' - eviction takes place without further hearings, either to execute the warrant or to carry out the eviction.

 

And one last thing - the OP has enough on his hands and doesn't need you a) berating him over burying his head in the sand or b) reading your incorrect nonsense about the process, particularly when you claim to have been through it yourself, so obviously at some point buried your own head in the sand!

 

To the OP: try not to worry - you should be able to sort this out, and in actual fact, if you can clear the arrears in their entirety by borrowing from family, I'd suggest you apply to have the original PO set aside, rather than stay the eviction. You have an automatic right to do this as you were not in attendance at the original hearing.

[adztec77]

Thanks all for the reassurance, this has gone a long way in helping me calm down about this.

 

I am going to start gathering as much money as I can, and meeting my father tomorrow to ask for some help. In the worst case scenario, I will have access to £2000 on 23rd April, but my aim is to try and amass £4000.

 

What should I be doing now, should I communicate with the Solicitors acting for Santander?

Should I contact Santander directly?

 

I've had a look at the N244 form, I've looked at an example anyway, what should I put in for why I am seeking the order?

 

My reasons are that I am seriously rubbish at keeping on top of my finances - how thorough does this need to be or is there something specific I should state?

 

It's Monday tomorrow and I am ready to come out fighting, so please let me know what the best way forward should be and many thanks to you all for your support and reassurance, I'll do whatever it takes to resolve this. A million thank yous.

 

PS: Bandit127: I've no doubt that is just the first of many telling offs I am going to get over this!

[Windywoo]

adztec77, there is no point trying to contact Santander, once the matter has been passed to their awful solicitors -(HL Interactive?) they won't correspond with you!

 

When you contact the solicitors, don't send them any emails, because the simply do not respond, either write to them, so you have a papertrail or phone, and if you can record the calls!

 

In a similar situation as you, although we have paid the arrears, we're just trying to release some funds to pay all or most of a very small mortgage. Satansbank are the absolute pits!

 

Good Luck!

[Rocco17]

Hi. Personally I would advise trying to deal with the lender first. In my experience (admittedly not with Santander) I have always tried to do this. The lender may well just send you back to the lawyers but at least you tried, and that can never look bad.

 

As has been said, sounds like you are in a relatively good position here. One thing I would say is that, although honesty is always the best policy, just saying that you are awful at keeping on top of your finances may not be wise. It might come to a stage when you need to show that you WON'T be awful at keeping on top of your finances in the future, and that you would stick to any repayment arrangement.

 

As has been suggested though, if you clear the arrears then there is no longer a case and you can apply to have the order set aside. In which case I would suspect that the reason would be that the arrears have been cleared.

[adztec77]

So I have a telephone appointment at 3pm with a representative of Hamlins who are dealing with this case on behalf of Santander.

 

I am going to ask them for a monetary figure to drop this action so I know exactly how much I am dealing with. The arrears are £3746.26 as far as I can tell from the paperwork. Is it likely I will need to pay a load of fees as well?

 

I'll be recording the call and will tell them so. If this isn't the right thing to do let me know!!

 

I'm also having the (probably worse) meeting this evening to explain myself to my parents and ask for help.. Glum.

[Rocco17]

If the figure on the paperwork is £3746.26 the chances are that includes fees and charges. Lenders and solicitors don't tend to make the distinction until pressed into doing so.

 

One thing you might wish to consider would be to ask for a breakdown of the arrears balance to see what the missed payments are and what the fees and charges are. Admittedly I say this as someone who never had a positive response whenever I have needed to request this information, so I simply worked it out for myself by going through bank statements etc.