Handing keys back to mortgage co

[ben13]

Hi all,
Am after some advice regarding possibility of handing keys back to mortgage company.
As some of you know we're emigtrating (hopefully) and cant sell our house. Mortgage co won't let us rent it out either. So our only option is to hand the keys back.
How do we go about doing this?

[TUTTSI]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

Ben

Are you upto date with your mortgage payments?
Are the Mortgage company do a repossession?
Where would you live until you emigrate?
When are you emigrating?

[ben13]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

yes up to date,
They had a suspended repossession a couple of years back
We'd live here until we emigrate then hand keys back when we move out.
Before christmas hopefully

[ben13]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

***bump***

[Caspar]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

Ben,

Please think very carefully. Have a read of this site:

Mortgage and Repossession : Should I hand back my house keys?

You'll see it says that if you take this course of action, you are still liable for the full mortgage payments until the house sells, and they are likely to sell it at auction which would obviously mean it fetches a fraction of its real value. You would still be liable for any remaining shortfall.

I'd explain the situation to them fully, probably over the phone woth somebody senior and ask if there is no way they would be prepared to go back on their refusal to let you rent it out.

You'd even be better dropping the price to a silly price to ensure a sale than letting it sell at auction. One up the road from us which needed nothing doing to it (he went to prison for ages for being a drug dealer so the house was actually nice inside - plenty of money going into it!) would sell on the open market for around £85-90K. At auction it fetched £46K.

[ben13]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

Thanks Caspar,

mortgage co have been complete bar stewards since we took out the mortgage.

Cant sell at as not got enough to pay sols & estate agents fees!

[Caspar]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

Have you thought about a private sale or an internet estate agent. Doing it privately would mean no estate agent fees. Solicitors fees cannot be avoided as far as I'm aware because mortgage companies will only accept the electronic transfer of money on completion which us lesser mortals cannot do.

[ben13]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

One more point I forgot to mention is that we have negative equity!

[TUTTSI]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

Ben

You still have time then to try and sell.

As Caspar has said you should try every avenue that is available to you.

Do you know roughly how much negative equity you have or don't have in the property?

Sometimes you can sell by auction, perhaps it might be worth looking there as well as you could cap the price.

[ben13]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

about 7.5k
This is only because mortgage co hit us with masses of charges and heavy interest when we had problems paying.
To cut a long story short They capitalised arrears AND charges (which I believe is a tad naughty)

[Caspar]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

When are you actually emigrating -ie- what timescale are talking here? That would have a bearing on things. Whatever happens in my opinion in your position you need to be willing to do two things; Firstly you need to be willing to move out before you emigrate in order to secure a sale; Secondly as Tutts has said above you've got to explore EVERY avenue. You say there's negative equity and however much it is you're going to have to cover this somehow in order to be able to complete. Have you any potential to increase your income by taking in a lodger for a short time or anything like that?

Who is the mortgage company?


SORRY POSTS CROSSED!

[TUTTSI]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

OK Ben, have you started to reclaim this charges. You can with Mortgages go back 12 years, so I believe and if the Mortgage company say NO, then the FOS will help, you need to get this together pretty quickly so that you can make inrodes into this.

Do you have a list of all the charges - ie do you have all the statements?

Who is your lender?

We may be able to get this reduced so you will not be in so much negative equity.

about 7.5k
This is only because mortgage co hit us with masses of charges and heavy interest when we had problems paying.
To cut a long story short They capitalised arrears AND charges (which I believe is a tad naughty)

[ben13]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

OK Ben, have you started to reclaim this charges. You can with Mortgages go back 12 years, so I believe and if the Mortgage company say NO, then the FOS will help, you need to get this together pretty quickly so that you can make inrodes into this. no not done this yet

Do you have a list of all the charges - ie do you have all the statements?
no so i guess i need to SAR them?

Who is your lender? GE Money

We may be able to get this reduced so you will not be in so much negative equity. But we'll still be in negative equity with no funds (what little we have is going to council tax arrears)

Hope this helps

[Caspar]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

Get the SAR off asap Ben. Once you get that back go through it with a fine toothed comb and identify every charge on there. If any are questionable then you also want to ask for compensation which can go toward your negative equity. When I did this with my mortgage company, the compensation was mmore than the charges refunded.

[TUTTSI]

Re: Handing keys back to mortgage co

Ben, I would get that SAR off pretty quickly as we discussed yesterday and take it from there. They have 40 days to respond and in the mean time you are waiting for your Aussie working permit to go through.

If it does not come by the time you leave and have to return the keys, I would get a letter off to them advising them that all the charges, interest and compensation should be allocated against your account.