Old Mortgage Advice

[TTTC]

Hi,

First up, thanks for a great informative forum. It's about Time To Take Control (TTTC Username) of my finances.

First up, it has to be said I am probably the most stupid person on the planet when it comes to debt and mortgages


Secondly, we live in Scotland so the law may be different for us.



I took out a mortgage in December 99 and it was the type of mortgage where you paid for the mortgage and you paid a separate company to cover the interest in x amount of years in the hope that interest rates stayed about a certain percentage that it would clear in x amount of years- Scottish Amicable (Yip, I am that daft I don't know the proper name for it - Interest baring loan?).


Anyway, we got the mortgage through a dodgy independent broker because we were self employed at the time and never had x amount of years accounts. Yes, it wasn't above board but we were young, naive and desperate to get our dream house.:tinysmile_hmm_t2:

Anyway, due to many mistakes over the years we only paid this separate company (SA) for a year or two before only paying the mortgage itself. We found ourselves in arrears and eventually remortgaged.

After many years of more mistakes I can confirm we have sorted out our mortgage arrears, but now have another 19 years to pay off our mortgage.

Anyway, the question I want to ask is, is the money I paid to SA lost?

I pretty much know the answer is yes, but wanted to check.

[TUTTSI]

Re: Old Mortgage Advice

If you had arrears I bet your bottom dollar you had charges added. You need to send a DSAR to the company that you paid your mortgage to http://www.legalbeagles.info/forums/...-for-mortgages and this will get you account and charges as well as a lot of other information that might come in handy, the cost is £10 and you send this to the data controller they have 40 + 2 days to provide this and if they fail to deliver within this time they will be in big trouble.

Once you have their response, then you can write to them and ask for a refund as I bet they are extortionate. We did this with our second mortgage and they reduced the charges to £12. which was more reasonable than £35/£50 for a letters etc. Our first mortgage company said their charges were reasonable at £50/£75 a pop so will be tackleing them very soon as they have racked many thousands of pounds in charges.

If they write back and claim that their charges are fair and reasonable this can then be sent to the FOS for adjudication.

[Nikolai]

Re: Old Mortgage Advice

If you have any paperwork or references for Scottish Amicable, get in touch with them and ask. Sounds as if you took out an endowment mortgage, so you would have a life insurance policy with SA. If you only paid SA for a couple of years, it's unlikely your policy has much, if any, value. However you lose nothing by asking! If you've no records, phone them up - they should be able to trace you by name and postcode.

[TTTC]

Re: Old Mortgage Advice

Thanks to both of you for advice and apologies for taking so long to respond.

TUTTSI- Do you mean to the original mortgage company or my current one? We were in arrears with our current one for years, but they were very "soft" on us and due to this we eventually consolidated our arrears and now dont owe them anything as it was added to our mortgage. Would it be wise to rock the boat with them?
Nikolai- Many thanks, I will do.