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Hi Peeps
I hope I am posting this in the right place, I am new to this and not really too sure of the protocol.
I will do my best to keep this as short as poss but please be warned I may go on & on & on...
Hubby, myself & brother have some 'buy to let' mortgages with MX (Mortgage Express) part of Bradford & Bingley. We've had properties we let out for about 15 years & we've had mortgages with MX for about 7 years.
We have a mixture of houses and flats, old and new.
We have always had good relationships with our tenants, some have now been with us for over 10 years.
As these are 'buy to let' mortgages they are not regulated & do not afford the same protection as residential mortgages.
I mid 2008 we realised that interest rates were creeping up & that we may start to struggle to pay a few of the mortgages.
We approached MX and asked if they would allow us, for a short while, to just pay the rent we received as mortgage payments for the properties (at this point we had no arrears or late payments) and we offered to send them copies of the tenancy agreements as proof of the rent.
We asked that they work with us to allow us time to sell a couple of properties which would then allow us to come back up to date with the mortgage payments.
MX catagorically refused to negotiate with us in any shape or form. they actually said that they do not make any special kind of arrangements on buy to let mortgages.
We tried to speak with MX again on several occasions, all to no avail.
We continued to pay all of the mortgages in full except the few where the interest rates had greatly exceeded the rent, on these we paid what we were receiving as rent.
In Sept 08 Bradford & Bingley were nationallised by the government.
At the same time MX informed us that as we now had arrears on some of our properties, they were instructing LPA receivers to take over the management of those properties, the cost to us for instructing the receivers was £1000 per property (even though the arrears in some cases were as little as £120). MX still flately refused to negotiate with us, even though the appointed receiver would simply be collecting the rent, deducting their fee and then paying it to the lender.
In Oct 08 we received letters from MX stating that to protect their security, they were enforcing their right to apply an 'all monies charge' across our whole property portfolio.
We realised that we needed proffesional help and at the end of Sept 08 we instructed a solicitor to try to open the channels of communication with MX.
It took a while to arrange, but in Nov 08 our, then, solicitor & partner, a mediator, met with with a Mr Hugill who was at the time head of credit & fraud stratagy at MX.
Our solicitors were told that MX were 'sympathetic to our plight' as Bradford & Bingley had themselves been affected by the global financial downturn.
They said they had to leave the properties alone that were already being managed by the receivers but providing we worked through our solicitors they (MX) would not place any more properties into the hands of the LPA receivers.
It was explained to us that computer generated letters would continue to arrive but that we now had an agreement to workour way forward.
Unfortunately non of this was ever put formally in writing, all we have are the solicitors hand written notes.
As you can probably imagine we were very relieved.
As had been explained, letters from MX did continue to arrive throughout November & December. We did speak with the solicitor about these but he assured us that the letters would continue to arrive & we were not to worry.
On the 24th December we received lots of letters from MX stating that all of our remaining properties were being placed with LPA receivers,a different company to the 1st receivers.
We again made contact with the solicitors who tried to contact Mr Hugill but he had left for the Christmas break.
Again the solicitor tried to assure us that they had an agreement with Mr Hugill and we were to try not to worry (easier said than done)
In Jan 2009 we again asked the solicitor to make contact with Mr Hugill of MX.
Eventually we heard from the solicitor that Mr Hugill no longer worked for MX, we later found out that he was now a director of the very same company of receivers who had been appointed to manage our 1st lot of properties.
Our solicitors finally made contact with the group solicitor at MX. They were told that there was no evidence of an agreement between Mr Hugill & our solicitors and that he doubted Mr Hugill would have made such an agreement.
Our solicitors did not appear to argue or debate this statement, and at this point we realised we had very little faith in their ability.
In the letters we received from the receivers informing us of their appointments & the letters we received from MX informing us of their instruction appointing the receivers, it does seem that the receivers accepted the appointments before they were formally instructed by MX, sometimes there were differences of up to 2 months. Again we brought this to the attention of our solicitors, but they dissmissed it as typing errors, even though they were all dated differently.
In feb 09 we had totally lost confidence in our solicitors and stopped using them.
For about 6 months following this I am sorry to say that we 'buried our heads in the sand'. We ignored letters & 'phone calls, we either wouldn't or couldn't deal with either MX or the receivers.
Eventually we picked ourselves up, brushed ourselves down and started to fight again.
We realised that the receivers were slowly intimidating our tenants to such a degree that one by one they were leaving the properties.
The receivers were stating that they were marketing the properties & looking for new tenants. We have asked for proof of this but so far none has been provided.
When the receivers took over the 'management' of the properties, only one small flat was empty, as of today only about 35% of the properties have tenants in them paying rent.
Charges (again no proof in form of receipts) are being added to the mortgage accounts at alarming rates
We now know that a few of the properties have been sold at greatly reduced prices. We cannot get confirmation of this from either the receivers or MX. No doubt we will know when they start chasing us for the 'shortfall'.
We are fighting back, we have written quite a few letters to both MX & the receivers asking for explainations.
We instructed a public access barrister to write letters for us saying (on his advice) that we hold both MX & the receivers liable for the income that has been lost.
If all of the properties had been let and managed properly, the arrears that were outstanding would have been payed off early last year and with the low interest rates we would be bringing in a surplus of over £20k a month.
There has been no response to the barristers letters.
As it is, our only income is from hubbies disability living allowance & we can barely afford to put food on the table.
We are not entitled to any state benefits as we 'own' property!
Because the properties are empty & have not been re-possessed, the council tax is now down to us. We applied for the 6 month empty property exemptions but these have now run out & council tax is outstanding on all the empty properties. We now have several CCJ's due to this.
We spend every day trying to find a way forward.
We have pleaded with MX to sit down & talk to us about the stupidity of the situation, we've had no reply.
We've asked the receivers to let us help let & manage the properties, they have not replied.
We have written to our local MP, at least he replied but told us that as 'buy to lets' are unregulated there is nothing he can do to help.
Our letter to Alistair Darling has been ignored.
This situation cannot be in the best interest of the British taxpayer as their money will never be returned.
And finally if this continues we will eventually be made bankrupt, we will not be able to start again as our credit rating has been 'slashed to ribbons'.
We would really, really welcome any thoughts or ideas,
Thank you for taking the time to read this long, boring account of our woes
Kind regards
Mungos mum
p.s Mungo is a huge, soppy English Mastiff
I hope I am posting this in the right place, I am new to this and not really too sure of the protocol.
I will do my best to keep this as short as poss but please be warned I may go on & on & on...
Hubby, myself & brother have some 'buy to let' mortgages with MX (Mortgage Express) part of Bradford & Bingley. We've had properties we let out for about 15 years & we've had mortgages with MX for about 7 years.
We have a mixture of houses and flats, old and new.
We have always had good relationships with our tenants, some have now been with us for over 10 years.
As these are 'buy to let' mortgages they are not regulated & do not afford the same protection as residential mortgages.
I mid 2008 we realised that interest rates were creeping up & that we may start to struggle to pay a few of the mortgages.
We approached MX and asked if they would allow us, for a short while, to just pay the rent we received as mortgage payments for the properties (at this point we had no arrears or late payments) and we offered to send them copies of the tenancy agreements as proof of the rent.
We asked that they work with us to allow us time to sell a couple of properties which would then allow us to come back up to date with the mortgage payments.
MX catagorically refused to negotiate with us in any shape or form. they actually said that they do not make any special kind of arrangements on buy to let mortgages.
We tried to speak with MX again on several occasions, all to no avail.
We continued to pay all of the mortgages in full except the few where the interest rates had greatly exceeded the rent, on these we paid what we were receiving as rent.
In Sept 08 Bradford & Bingley were nationallised by the government.
At the same time MX informed us that as we now had arrears on some of our properties, they were instructing LPA receivers to take over the management of those properties, the cost to us for instructing the receivers was £1000 per property (even though the arrears in some cases were as little as £120). MX still flately refused to negotiate with us, even though the appointed receiver would simply be collecting the rent, deducting their fee and then paying it to the lender.
In Oct 08 we received letters from MX stating that to protect their security, they were enforcing their right to apply an 'all monies charge' across our whole property portfolio.
We realised that we needed proffesional help and at the end of Sept 08 we instructed a solicitor to try to open the channels of communication with MX.
It took a while to arrange, but in Nov 08 our, then, solicitor & partner, a mediator, met with with a Mr Hugill who was at the time head of credit & fraud stratagy at MX.
Our solicitors were told that MX were 'sympathetic to our plight' as Bradford & Bingley had themselves been affected by the global financial downturn.
They said they had to leave the properties alone that were already being managed by the receivers but providing we worked through our solicitors they (MX) would not place any more properties into the hands of the LPA receivers.
It was explained to us that computer generated letters would continue to arrive but that we now had an agreement to workour way forward.
Unfortunately non of this was ever put formally in writing, all we have are the solicitors hand written notes.
As you can probably imagine we were very relieved.
As had been explained, letters from MX did continue to arrive throughout November & December. We did speak with the solicitor about these but he assured us that the letters would continue to arrive & we were not to worry.
On the 24th December we received lots of letters from MX stating that all of our remaining properties were being placed with LPA receivers,a different company to the 1st receivers.
We again made contact with the solicitors who tried to contact Mr Hugill but he had left for the Christmas break.
Again the solicitor tried to assure us that they had an agreement with Mr Hugill and we were to try not to worry (easier said than done)
In Jan 2009 we again asked the solicitor to make contact with Mr Hugill of MX.
Eventually we heard from the solicitor that Mr Hugill no longer worked for MX, we later found out that he was now a director of the very same company of receivers who had been appointed to manage our 1st lot of properties.
Our solicitors finally made contact with the group solicitor at MX. They were told that there was no evidence of an agreement between Mr Hugill & our solicitors and that he doubted Mr Hugill would have made such an agreement.
Our solicitors did not appear to argue or debate this statement, and at this point we realised we had very little faith in their ability.
In the letters we received from the receivers informing us of their appointments & the letters we received from MX informing us of their instruction appointing the receivers, it does seem that the receivers accepted the appointments before they were formally instructed by MX, sometimes there were differences of up to 2 months. Again we brought this to the attention of our solicitors, but they dissmissed it as typing errors, even though they were all dated differently.
In feb 09 we had totally lost confidence in our solicitors and stopped using them.
For about 6 months following this I am sorry to say that we 'buried our heads in the sand'. We ignored letters & 'phone calls, we either wouldn't or couldn't deal with either MX or the receivers.
Eventually we picked ourselves up, brushed ourselves down and started to fight again.
We realised that the receivers were slowly intimidating our tenants to such a degree that one by one they were leaving the properties.
The receivers were stating that they were marketing the properties & looking for new tenants. We have asked for proof of this but so far none has been provided.
When the receivers took over the 'management' of the properties, only one small flat was empty, as of today only about 35% of the properties have tenants in them paying rent.
Charges (again no proof in form of receipts) are being added to the mortgage accounts at alarming rates
We now know that a few of the properties have been sold at greatly reduced prices. We cannot get confirmation of this from either the receivers or MX. No doubt we will know when they start chasing us for the 'shortfall'.
We are fighting back, we have written quite a few letters to both MX & the receivers asking for explainations.
We instructed a public access barrister to write letters for us saying (on his advice) that we hold both MX & the receivers liable for the income that has been lost.
If all of the properties had been let and managed properly, the arrears that were outstanding would have been payed off early last year and with the low interest rates we would be bringing in a surplus of over £20k a month.
There has been no response to the barristers letters.
As it is, our only income is from hubbies disability living allowance & we can barely afford to put food on the table.
We are not entitled to any state benefits as we 'own' property!
Because the properties are empty & have not been re-possessed, the council tax is now down to us. We applied for the 6 month empty property exemptions but these have now run out & council tax is outstanding on all the empty properties. We now have several CCJ's due to this.
We spend every day trying to find a way forward.
We have pleaded with MX to sit down & talk to us about the stupidity of the situation, we've had no reply.
We've asked the receivers to let us help let & manage the properties, they have not replied.
We have written to our local MP, at least he replied but told us that as 'buy to lets' are unregulated there is nothing he can do to help.
Our letter to Alistair Darling has been ignored.
This situation cannot be in the best interest of the British taxpayer as their money will never be returned.
And finally if this continues we will eventually be made bankrupt, we will not be able to start again as our credit rating has been 'slashed to ribbons'.
We would really, really welcome any thoughts or ideas,
Thank you for taking the time to read this long, boring account of our woes
Kind regards
Mungos mum
p.s Mungo is a huge, soppy English Mastiff
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