Repossession Madness

This weekend I was asked by a Southfield family to attend a meeting between them and the agent looking after the home they have recently been forced to leave by their mortgage lender.  I found the meeting utterly unpleasant in the extreme, because it pained me to visit a beautiful former family home that had been repossessed by the lender for reasons outside the family’s control.  The meeting really brought it home to me the fact that the credit crunch is biting local families very, very hard.

What actually happened in this case was that the original lender had sold the mortgage on the property to another company, something which is sadly becoming  increasingly common.  The original mortgage was fixed rate and affordable, the family concerned had no difficulty in making the payments, the lender who purchased the mortgage from the building society changed this instantly to a variable rate loan, and doubled the monthly repayment to a ridiculously unaffordable level at a single stroke.  The really tragic thing about this kind of behaviour by lenders is that it is completely legal as the law stands at present.  One thing I find find totally repugnant about this behaviour by mortgage lenders is that they are quite legally allowed to charge whatever they see fit in administration fees, and they are then allowed to charge interest on those fees at wholly unacceptable rates as high as 17-18% if the borrower is unable to pay the bill when it is demanded of them.  The startling thing  for me was that when I researched the mortgage lender in question, is that they have considerable “form” for making unfair demands and behaving unreasonably toward their clients.  Indeed, the Sun newspaper recently took the very same company to task over their attitude problem toward another family who went directly to the newspaper’s finance editor with their plight.

Further unacceptable behaviour followed by the lender’s bailiffs when they effectively broke into the house to remove the owner’s remaining possessions a week before they were legally entitled, causing even more distress to people who really did not need it when they were already feeling at their worst.  The bailiffs gained access to the house by drilling out the lock on a french door at the back, leaving a very unsightly mess.  I was shocked by this and the fact that the bailiffs had decided to seriously damage the front door in order to fit a new lock.  In my judgment, this was completely unnecessary as the property was already for sale and the keys were already held with by owner’s agents.  Having seen this wanton destruction at first hand and the fact that the lender had been so heavy handed in sending their heavies in before they were legally entitled makes me question whether some in the finance industry have any morals at all or have any consideration as to what impact their behaviour really has on the lives of ordinary people.

The attitude of the lender’s agent left a lot to be desired in my view, the former owner of the property asked for my view on the damage made to gain entry and “secure” the front door.  The agent’s representative said he didn’t think the amount of damage was unreasonable, I revealed who I was and why I’d been asked to attend and told him that in my judgment the front door looked as though it had been “bulldozed.”  Fortunately, he did change his arrogant attitude toward the resident who had sought my help, and he was rather better behaved afterwards.  I am really left wondering what on earth is going on in the world when finance companies and their agents behave like this toward people who are already under stress from finding themselves in  a position where they are faced with ridiculously increased mortgage payments and actually losing the home they treasure so much.

Putting it simply, the law HAS to change to stop this kind of greedy, arrogant and immoral behaviour by the finance industry.