Hi everyone, sorry this is long....

Some of you may remember my previous posts regarding my house that was a voluntary repossession. Well I've back and forth with the Halifax over the last 2 months, trying to agree a settlement. My case was slightly different to a lot of others on this site, as my house had a negative equity situation - but nowhere near as much as the Halifax were claiming! £13.5K from a £25K mortgage? I don’t think so. I believed that they under marketed and undersold, and I think I was justified when I received my SARN info. A higher offer was not accepted for some unexplained reason.

Anyway, enough babble. We have settled today for £5600. £5300 immediately, and 3 x £100 payments. This sounds a hell of a lot, but £3500 is from the endowment. The rest I have borrowed from a family friend and will pay back at £100 a month to them, rather than the Halifax (didn’t want to risk missing a payment at a later date). This settlement figure is much higher than the ones that have been going on for 6 to 10 years, but I don’t think I could have coped with all this for that period of time. So I'm delighted it’s over! After 6 years of worry (when the house was empty and I lived 270 miles away), I've managed to settle it all within 4/5 months (since repossession earlier this year).

Don't give up those of you that are still fighting. The building societies are taking the mick by underselling and adding things to the mortgage that are totally unacceptable, why should you pay for this? For example, the locks on my house were changed at a cost of approx £400 - but the locks were in perfect working order beforehand, and the back door was actually brand new, literally 2 or 3 weeks old. They said it was their ‘policy’ to this for insurance purposes, well it is isn’t my policy, so I shouldn’t have to pay for it!

THANK YOU! for all the great advise and help you have given. I will continue to look at the site now and then, to see if I can be of any assistance to anyone going through this nightmare process.

By the way, after I received my SARN info, they implied that I was dragging out the process and avoiding settlement by demanding all sorts of information. Bloody cheek! I retorted by saying ‘did you just expect me to pay £13.5K without any questions and trying to establish if I actually owe the money?’ Needless to say, I carried on with my investigation and hence the settlement was reached after I had put my evidence to them.

Kind regards,

Mel

-- Mel Trudgett (melanie.trudgett@ntlworld.com), October 11, 2003

Answers

Mel,

Great news, I wish you all the very best for the future, and one with no more financial problems.

A number of building societies/banks and solicitors have said to borrowers that they are just delaying the process by sarning, but if they landed up with a whacking great bill would they pay it with no questions asked ? If so, please let me know.

Mark.

-- M Amos (idgroms@hotmail.com), October 12, 2003.

Mel

Really glad you have got what YOU wanted and I wish you every good luck and happiness for the future!

Take care of yourself

M

-- m (Anderston828@aol.com), October 13, 2003.

Great feeling isnt it, I settled about two months ago. Very emotional it was too, Well Done!!

-- Neil (neilaw_uk@yahoo.co.uk), October 16, 2003.