Mortgage arrears - Bank wont help us

Hello, we are in arrears with our mortgage and are trying to get back up to date but the bank wont seem to help us. Firstly when we do make a payment they do not clear the oldest but take a bit off each payment owed (currently they say we have 6 months payments outstanding but in realtity if they had cleared the oldest we would have about 3 and half outstanding). This way it appears that we have more arrears and they said once we have 6 months outstanding then it goes for court action. Plus they are charging us daily (around 50c per payment per day so about 3 euros a day in total) in interest. To us it seems like they deliberately keep the payments "open" so they can charge interest and say we have "x" amount of payments in arrears. When we made a payment last month they didnt even take it off our mortgage and it is still sitting in our normal account despite asking them numerous times to deduct it from our mortgage. We have asked to switch to interest only and they said no because we were in arrears, we have asked to freeze interest charges and they have ignored us and now we have had another 300 euros added to our outstanding balance - we do not know what this is for or why and didnt know it was even going to be added. We are trying our best and its not like we havent been making payments as we have and will make another this week but unfortunately we cannot clear it all in one go and the charges being added daily doesnt help us. Also they made us take out a life insurance which we didnt know about until after the mortgage had gone through which costs us monthly yet we have just realised that the information they submitted (as we were never asked) is totally incorrect ie they said my husband never smokes and never has which is incorrect and they guessed his weight which im sure is also wrong (as for the rest I can only assume they are wrong aswell but unfortuanetly it is in spanish). Surely this is bad practice and we are paying for something that is wrong. We would really like to know what our options are. Unfortunately we would probably owe more than the property would sell for so we would be in negative equity. I do not work nor claim any benefits so I have no proof of any income and my partner has only just started a new contract abroad so doesnt have much proof yet either. We have worked out that we could probably clear most if not all our debt by christmas but the bank will no longer talk to us or try and help us. If they just stopped their charges would be a great help but they refuse to do so. What can we do?? thanks

Hello

I am in a very similar situation and not really in a good place to give advice

I got the exact same response about interest only.

After signing up the mortgage is full of Abusive Clauses in favor of the bank.

I have been advised to walk away even by the local bank!!

If your bank is Solbank they are unbelievable and advised another owner in my block to walk away from 4 apartments that they cant sell so the mortgage is 600k the value 300k and the arrears legal fees and community, on the face of it this is a very uneconomic solution to give to a man who went into the bank with cash to resolve the issue but just not enough!!!

This site says you can ask a Spanish lawyer for advice for free, my paid advice was find the money. By the way I am in Ireland and the money cant be found!!!

I got a local lawyer to try to buy me some time but so far getting no where with them.

Hi the bank is Cam and they have finally responded to me today to say that my account is blocked as it is now with their lawyer and they are not dealing with it. This is the reason, they say, why my last payment of 600 euros hasn´t debited the mortgage yet they still charge me interest daily!! (its ok for the account to accumulate charges but when I try to pay its suddenly "blocked"!!! And they knew at the time I was sending a payment because I advised them so that seems as though they knew at that time it would not go on the account.)I was going to make a payment today but whats the point if it wont actually go towards my debt, and where is my last 600!! They said I need to pay the whole amount or I will lose my home. They said they have also passed it to their solicitors in the UK to pursue me over there yet I havent lived there for over 6 years and own no assets there. I live in the property here in Spain and they say if I walk away they will come after me for the debt and unfortunately I think we are in negative equity as nothing in our block is selling anyway! They havent given me the details of who is dealing with it so what am I meant to do now??!!

It would be worth your while to just stop paying and stick it out for as long as you can will take them min 1.5 years and up to 7 to repossess so sit it out rent free for a few years and save your money

That does sound very tempting but this is our home and we do want to pay for it. Last week we gave the bank nearly 1500 euros for our mortgage but they claim they cant deduct it from our arrears because our account is frozen (yet if we could pay all or half the arrears - around 2500-then they could unblock the account- funny that!). They said we needed to speak with their lawyers who have wrote to us. We said we had not received the letters which is true as post where we are is very tempermental and asked that they email it to us which they said they cannot do and said we needed to provide another address which we cannot do as this is our only address. They then said that their system did show that the letters they sent were returned (yet at no point in our daily communication with the bank did they ask us to confirm our address or said these letters had come back!) Exactly how they expect us to reply to a letter from their lawyers when we never receive them is a mystery to me! We left the branch after ensuring our address was correct on their system and asking again for them to contact their legal department to get our account unblocked so that these payments could be taken into account and asking them to email us the lawyers details which they said they would. We backed this up again in an email to them when we got home. So imagine my surprise when today not only is the account still blocked and our payment not deducted but we seem to have incurred a 600 euro charge!! So we have emailed them again as no reply from them following our visit last week. How anyone is meant to be able to manage their affairs here is beyond me. After our visit last week we felt confident we could get up to date by xmas and that the bank may actually be doing something to try and help but how very wrong are we. We have now incurred nearly 900 euros worth of "charges" in just 2 weeks plus not forgetting the daily interest charges. We just do not seem to be getting anywhere. Does anyone have any advice as to what we should do?

You would pay a spainish lawyer a lot less than 900euro it might be worth talking to one at this point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Unregistered

It would be worth your while to just stop paying and stick it out for as long as you can will take them min 1.5 years and up to 7 to repossess so sit it out rent free for a few years and save your money

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Do you think this is the only solutions. Because money saving isn't the only problem here.

Leaving your property out there for repossession should always be your last resort. The consequences of such course of action are simply too harsh on an individual.

When a borrower takes out a mortgage in Spain he becomes responsible for the repayment of such with any other personal property he has abroad or in Spain, both now or in the future. Of course that the property being mortgaged acts as a guarantee and this can be returned in account of the amount outstanding of the mortgage. However, with the fall in property prices, the property is often accepted/auctioned at much less than current market price and the borrower remains personally liable for the amount which is left outstanding in the mortgage. In other words, you are left without the property but with a personal debt that can amount to thousands and thousands of euros with your bank.

The bank will then be in search of any other assets available that will reduce the outstanding balance. The Bank can legally go after any other properties (in Spain or the UK), vehicles, bank accounts and even place a partial embargo over your salary.

If a possibility to renegotiate the mortgage is available and under these new terms the borrower can fulfill his payment obligations, then this is always the preferred choice.

For more information on how a Lawyer can help in the negotiation, please visit the following link or contact us at info @ lawbird.com:

http://belegal.com/blog-by-antonio-f...mortgage-loan/