I need to position myself...

mozattack

I feel like a fool clearing all personal debt to free up money to pay my mortgage when you hear of this crap.

I would gladly see my home and let the bank take the proceeds to be rid of the €280k mortgage.

If only people knew the mugs they are being made by actually paying their loans. Either a blanket write-off or none.

I need to position myself to avail of these get out of jail cards.

http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/bank-agrees-to-write-off-110000-mortgage-debt-3285228.html

drunkmonkey

mozattack wrote: »

I feel like a fool clearing all personal debt to free up money to pay my mortgage when you hear of this crap.

That's the problem right there, it makes you look like a mug for doing the right thing.
I reckon you'd want to be in an awful mess with no hope of any money coming from anywhere before they'd agree to anything like that.

Islander13

drunkmonkey wrote: »

That's the problem right there, it makes you look like a mug for doing the right thing.
I reckon you'd want to be in an awful mess with no hope of any money coming from anywhere before they'd agree to anything like that.

I work in a bank. There are occasional deals like the above being done but all the ones I've seen are where people have sold EVERYTHING (including their home) and where the person has no prospect of dealing with the residual, either unemployed or low salary

Bank really doesn't really have an option in those cases as the costs of going legal against that person would be dead money so just forgive and move on.

For people who want debt forgiveness AND to remain in their property, its a long way away.

_Kaiser_

I have a much simpler outlook...

You signed the mortgage of your own free will (no one dragged you in off the street and held a gun to your head), you were aware (or should have been as a adult) that there's no guarantees in life and "your investment may go down as well as up", and as such you (not me, or other taxpayers - who are the ones who end up paying for this crap) are liable for every cent you borrowed.

Certainly yes, your lender should be forced to work with you to agree realistic repayments that change with your circumstances, but under no circumstances should you be able to "walk away" scot free!

And just so it doesn't seem like I'm engaging in a holier-than-thou witch hunt...

I took out a personal loan in the "good times" that I subsequently increased over the next few years. I was then laid off for most of 2010 and this debt didn't just disappear (nor did my credit card balance or other bills)

First thing I did when I was made redundant was call the bank and explain the situation. I also offered them an amount that I felt I could realistically repay every month while I tried to find another job.

When I did (almost a year later) get that job, it meant me having to drive 1000 km a week and the associated cost of that and it paid less than my old job, but I proactively rang the bank back and offered to increase the repayments - not to the same level as they were originally no, but still a fair bit more than I was paying then.

This year I got promoted and moved to another division. So I rang them again and offered to increase the amount again, but as it turns out we've agreed a new arrangement that will allow me to clear off both loan and credit card faster, for less than it was costing me per month separately. Yes it means a longer term and a increased overall total (not much really in the scheme of things) but such is life.

My point is, if you took on a debt, it's on YOU to pay it back not cry "can't someone else do it". If it takes you till you retire to clear it, that's what you do... or is it in fact the case that my parents were wrong and you're not in fact responsible for your actions anymore??

Kaiser2000

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

This year I got promoted and moved to another division. So I rang them again and offered to increase the amount again, but as it turns out we've agreed a new arrangement that will allow me to clear off both loan and credit card faster, for less than it was costing me per month separately. Yes it means a longer term and a increased overall total (not much really in the scheme of things) but such is life.

What?

Stheno

bluewolf wrote: »

What?

Maybe they meant a shorter term?

Or bigger payments?

Dunno.

Closest I've seen to this is two couples who are friends not in negative equity, but in arrears where the bank recapitalised their arrears.

BlackEdelweiss

I understand what kaiser2000 is saying about paying back your debts, nobody forced us to buy houses but admittedly some people were very greedy with what they bought and have lumped themselves with hugh debts. We bought modestly before the real high point and fortunately do not owe a fortune. We are both unemployed now and our house is worth well below what we paid even though we put on an extension paid for with a redundancy payment and most of our savings. I got the house valued today and we would be lucky to get €115,000 but we owe €124,000. I have a job offer overseas and am planning to move the whole family but I wont be earning enough over there initially to be able to finance repaying any debt but if I dont take this job there is no way out for us in this country.
Would the banks chase me for 8 or 9 grand or if I could manage to get it down to 4 or 5 before I leave. I know it is still a lot of money but it is fairly small in comparison to what some people are looking for.
Our other option is to rent it but we wouldent cover the mortgage with rental, even on interest only.

AltAccount

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

even though we put on an extension paid for with a redundancy payment and most of our savings.

Why?

BlackEdelweiss

AltAccount wrote: »

Why?

Because we have 4 kids in a small 3 bed semi and we needed the room. If we had not built the extension the estate agent said our house would be worth €90,000. Even if we kept all the money the extension cost us we would still have to just hand it over to the bank if we decided to sell to make the up difference and we would still be €10,000 short like we are now.
I had hoped to be able to find work here but unfortunately after sending out over 120 cv's to England and Ireland I could not find any work. I sent 2 cv's to New Zealand and was lucky enough to get two job offers. As I can't just fly to New Zealand every week I have no choice but to uproot my family and move to the other side of the world therefore I have to sell my house.

NIMAN

Although its sad to see some people who cannot afford to keep their home, gotta agree with a lot of what Kaiser says.

A large number of people in this country took on properties thinking they were going to sell them on in the future and make a killing. It has backfired on a lot of people now and they all now want a 'get out of jail free' card. Well one doesn't exist without the tax payer picking up the cost.

All the forms I have ever signed in relation to mortgages have the disclaimers on them - but I chose to sign on the dotted line. And so did everyone else. Its time people stood up for their decisions in this country. Personal responsibility seems to be a thing of the past.

AltAccount

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Because we have 4 kids in a small 3 bed semi and we needed the room. If we had not built the extension the estate agent said our house would be worth €90,000. Even if we kept all the money the extension cost us we would still have to just hand it over to the bank if we decided to sell to make the up difference and we would still be €10,000 short like we are now.
I had hoped to be able to find work here but unfortunately after sending out over 120 cv's to England and Ireland I could not find any work. I sent 2 cv's to New Zealand and was lucky enough to get two job offers. As I can't just fly to New Zealand every week I have no choice but to uproot my family and move to the other side of the world therefore I have to sell my house.

You're very lucky your house appreciated by the same amount you spent on it, that was a risk. I'm glad it panned out.

BlackEdelweiss

AltAccount wrote: »

You're very lucky your house appreciated by the same amount you spent on it, that was a risk. I'm glad it panned out.

If we got €115,000 for it then it would cover it, not including legal costs and commissions and he said we would be lucky to get that so we havent really covered our investment.went back to college

With regard to the OP's story I just cant understand how they can decide that any family is so badly off that they cant repay their mortgage. Using my family as an example only because I know our situation and not looking for sympathy (or abuse), we are both unemployed, my wife worked for 9 years before being let go, I worked on and off while I went back to college but the work has dried us now as well. We have 4 kids under 12 and have to pay a mortgage each month which we have never missed a payment. Our childrens allowance goes straight to the TSB and without it we would be screwed. We live in fear of anything breaking in the house or the car now as we have literally run out of money to fix anything.
There are thousands of families in the same boat as us, all as skint as each other so how do they decide who is deserving of forgiveness. I dont mind paying my debts so long as everybody else is paying theirs but it annoys the sh.it out of me when I hear about people getting these kind of deals while the rest of us struggle. Thats why I dont mind looking for a way out of this, I dont want to end up feeling like an idiot, depriving my kids of the basics while other guys in the same situation are living the life again debt free.

AltAccount

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

If we got €115,000 for it then it would cover it, not including legal costs and commissions and he said we would be lucky to get that so we havent really covered our investment.went back to college

With regard to the OP's story I just cant understand how they can decide that any family is so badly off that they cant repay their mortgage. Using my family as an example only because I know our situation and not looking for sympathy (or abuse), we are both unemployed, my wife worked for 9 years before being let go, I worked on and off while I went back to college but the work has dried us now as well. We have 4 kids under 12 and have to pay a mortgage each month which we have never missed a payment. Our childrens allowance goes straight to the TSB and without it we would be screwed. We live in fear of anything breaking in the house or the car now as we have literally run out of money to fix anything.
There are thousands of families in the same boat as us, all as skint as each other so how do they decide who is deserving of forgiveness. I dont mind paying my debts so long as everybody else is paying theirs but it annoys the sh.it out of me when I hear about people getting these kind of deals while the rest of us struggle. Thats why I dont mind looking for a way out of this, I dont want to end up feeling like an idiot, depriving my kids of the basics while other guys in the same situation are living the life again debt free.

But how many people do you know who have been forgiven debt, and for how much?

If you hadn't spent all the redundancy money and savings on the extension, how would that have affected your ability to cover or partially cover your mortgage payments, and therefore the arrears you owe?

BlackEdelweiss

AltAccount wrote: »

But how many people do you know who have been forgiven debt, and for how much?

If you hadn't spent all the redundancy money and savings on the extension, how would that have affected your ability to cover or partially cover your mortgage payments, and therefore the arrears you owe?

My point there was that we can cover the repayments on what we get from the dole and childrens allowance, that is why I cant see how some people can say they cant make their repayments. We have to cut things from our life to make them but we can make them.

I take your point about how many people have been given forgiveness but I think it is the amount of people lining up for it and claiming they are unable to pay their mortgage and having "cornflake days" that is annoying me.

Had we not build the extension we would have had extra money but it would have got smaller and smaller each month, going on small things or maybe treating ourselves and the kids to a holiday but probably just paying the basics like repairs, replacement and servicing of all the things that can break in a house or car. We invested it in our property and on our family and we do not regret it one bit. Our problem is that now we have to sell up and are left with this shortfall which I cant afford to repay on my new salary, we are actually going to be worse off in NZ than we are here except that my career will hopefully progress down there and I will eventually be able to give a better life for the family. This is including my wife working down there as well. If we tried to sell the house with no extension built on it and take into account the amount our savings would have reduced we would be worse off than we are now with regard to the shortfall.

mozattack

A large number of people in this country took on properties thinking they were going to sell them on in the future and make a killing. It has backfired on a lot of people now and they all now want a 'get out of jail free' card. Well one doesn't exist without the tax payer picking up the cost.

I think there should be a general write-off or none, not this random selection of people who I do know happens BTW.

Also just because you upgraded your house and kept the previous house doesn't make you greedy or want to make a killing. I did that because I have no pension so the rent (if i can keep the house) would be my pension. Private pensions went whallop too so no-one is telling me that what I did was "greedy".

Easy for those to make judgement when over 400k people in the country will get the most bloated public sector pension income in the world when they retire. Private sector dont have that luxury so one way of securing a pension income was with property.

NIMAN

mozattack wrote: »

A large number of people in this country took on properties thinking they were going to sell them on in the future and make a killing. It has backfired on a lot of people now and they all now want a 'get out of jail free' card. Well one doesn't exist without the tax payer picking up the cost.

I think there should be a general write-off or none, not this random selection of people who I do know happens BTW.

Also just because you upgraded your house and kept the previous house doesn't make you greedy or want to make a killing. I did that because I have no pension so the rent (if i can keep the house) would be my pension. Private pensions went whallop too so no-one is telling me that what I did was "greedy".

Easy for those to make judgement when over 400k people in the country will get the most bloated public sector pension income in the world when they retire. Private sector dont have that luxury so one way of securing a pension income was with property.

Is there any guarantee that they will get these pensions in the future though?

There is a pensions timebomb waiting to explode in the Western world, with a lot of people going to be very surprised when they get to old age.

Sure they are raising the retirement age steadily over the next decade or so, by the time people in the 20s now get to retirement, the age for it will probably be about 80.

You'll be praying for death when you are trying to do your job when you're 80:D

tony81

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

You signed the mortgage of your own free will (no one dragged you in off the street and held a gun to your head), you were aware (or should have been as a adult) that there's no guarantees in life and "your investment may go down as well as up", and as such you (not me, or other taxpayers - who are the ones who end up paying for this crap) are liable for every cent you borrowed.

SNIP

I took out a personal loan in the "good times" that I subsequently increased over the next few years. I was then laid off for most of 2010 and this debt didn't just disappear (nor did my credit card balance or other bills)

What a hero

Fact is the government are screwing people over. TRS is gone. Property tax is coming. The banks are now government-owned and despite record low interest rates, they all increased mortgage interest rates.

The government did nothing to protect people's "investments" (I hate that word, as in the case of a modest house it's not really an investment, is it? It's a home.)

IMO the government should recognise that devastating effect the property crash had on (mainly) the younger generation - may be working until 67 and unable to put money into a pension because they're financing a loan.
Therefore, if people have a few measly quid in a PRSA, they *should* be allowed to use it to pay down their mortgage. And a much higher TRS *should* be introduced for the negative equity generation (i.e. let them bail themselves out instead of charging them income tax of 52%+ for income that strays into the higher rate, then to add insult to injury applying a property tax to the individual's biggest liability.. while all the time funding rent supplement and council houses for the long-term unemployed and immigrants!)

Now to supposedly kick-start the market they've launch a negative-equity protection scheme on new homes, an extended, higher TRS on new homes, and banks also offer (you guessed it) lower rates on new homes. It's quite crazy, and it's clear the government hasn't learned its lesson about meddling in the economy (I'm not even going into the detail here).

This is the issue people have with the government. The people who made an effort to support themselves have been screwed over (not just home-owners, but also small business owners)

Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted to see a few greedy sods falls off their high horses. But you're one of the lucky ones who was able to continue paying off their loans. Not everyone is able to.

BuffyBot

As this isn't really within the remit of the B & I & P forum, I'll send this to a more appropriate home.

frankosw

mozattack wrote: »

Easy for those to make judgement when over 400k people in the country will get the most bloated public sector pension income in the world when they retire..

Really?

mozattack wrote: »

Private sector dont have that luxury so one way of securing a pension income was with property.

Well obviously it wasnt was it?...you could have provided for a pension by putting money into a pension scheme instead of "investing" into a property bubble in the hopes you'd get rich quick.

The amateur landlords who got thier fingers burnt,like the banks and developers are blaming the PS for thier woes or at least bringing them into the equation.

Unbelievable.

Idbatterim

how do these banks "know" the circumstances wont change? even if they are on the dole they have an income. Most of these people getting debt written off will at some stage in the future inherit property etc... Why not bring repayment down to tiny levels, wave the interest and do this until something changes?

frankosw

Idbatterim wrote: »

Why not bring repayment down to tiny levels, wave the interest and do this until something changes?

Because thats not the way banks do business.

the groutch

the story the OP quoted is a rare exception
in that case it was a foreign bank who had bought the debt, probably at a very big discount, and will probably still make a profit on the settlement.

I've lost count of the number of threads with people who can still afford their repayments but think they can effectively throw the keys at the bank manager, and be let off their mortgage.
They are living in cloud-cuckoo land, and I hope that anyone who tries to pull a stunt like that gets their comeuppance.

tony81

the groutch wrote: »

They are living in cloud-cuckoo land, and I hope that anyone who tries to pull a stunt like that gets their comeuppance.

Actually, it's good the some people have done this.

For a while ptsb kept hiking variable rates, to the point where they reached 6.15% for certain customers (mainly customers considered the biggest risk, because they were in the most negative equity! pretty cruel IMO)

PTSB then started to notice they had higher than average non-performing loans relative to the other banks with lower variable rates.

Of course I'm sure some of this could be due to the type of loans, but I bet a large part of it was people who really just couldn't take any more and rightly told ptsb where they could stick their loan.

A lot of people don't seem to realise that bankruptcy is NOT a moral decision, it's a business decision.

We're in the EU.. the government hailed the arrival of Polish workers who lowered labour prices and crowded out the lower end of the property market. The government regularly gives construction contracts to Northern contractors. Why the hell shouldn't people avail of bankruptcy on more favourable terms rather than being serfs to STATE OWNED banks?

If the state doesn't care about the people, people should be free to abandon the state. The penalties of declaring bankruptcy in the UK can still be quite harsh (more so than some people seem to realise) but it's certainly a good option available to people who would literally be living in indentured servitude otherwise.

Sleepy

You can only declare bankruptcy if you are in fact bankrupt. If you want to position yourself to be so, don't expect to keep *anything*. Not the car, not the wife's engagement ring, not the kids Playstations, not the house in the wife's name. You should be completely liquidated until the point where all you have is the clothes on your back: *THEN* you're bankrupt and your debts can be written off..

sock puppet

mozattack wrote: »

Private pensions went whallop too so no-one is telling me that what I did was "greedy".

Unless you planned to retire in 2009 I don't see why this would have concerned you.

maninasia

mozattack wrote: »

A large number of people in this country took on properties thinking they were going to sell them on in the future and make a killing. It has backfired on a lot of people now and they all now want a 'get out of jail free' card. Well one doesn't exist without the tax payer picking up the cost.

I think there should be a general write-off or none, not this random selection of people who I do know happens BTW.

Also just because you upgraded your house and kept the previous house doesn't make you greedy or want to make a killing. I did that because I have no pension so the rent (if i can keep the house) would be my pension. Private pensions went whallop too so no-one is telling me that what I did was "greedy".

Easy for those to make judgement when over 400k people in the country will get the most bloated public sector pension income in the world when they retire. Private sector dont have that luxury so one way of securing a pension income was with property.

Instead of a write-off the banks should be able to write-down the loans or the negative equity, on provision that the bank is entitled to all proceeds of a house sale now or in future.

I think this would help families who need the flexibility to move in search of work or other circumstances.

maninasia

Sleepy wrote: »

You can only declare bankruptcy if you are in fact bankrupt. If you want to position yourself to be so, don't expect to keep *anything*. Not the car, not the wife's engagement ring, not the kids Playstations, not the house in the wife's name. You should be completely liquidated until the point where all you have is the clothes on your back: *THEN* you're bankrupt and your debts can be written off..

I think it's not that difficult is it. Most people who want to declare bankrupt are underwater anyway. They probably owe money on the car or it's a banger don't have the money to run it. What other assets do they have? The house is going anyway. In reality the banks will not be able to trace many things.

the culture of deference

Sleepy wrote: »

You can only declare bankruptcy if you are in fact bankrupt. If you want to position yourself to be so, don't expect to keep *anything*. Not the car, not the wife's engagement ring, not the kids Playstations, not the house in the wife's name. You should be completely liquidated until the point where all you have is the clothes on your back: *THEN* you're bankrupt and your debts can be written off..

I think you need to see the list of those who have gone to the UK.

martingriff

mozattack wrote: »

A large number of people in this country took on properties thinking they were going to sell them on in the future and make a killing. It has backfired on a lot of people now and they all now want a 'get out of jail free' card. Well one doesn't exist without the tax payer picking up the cost.

I think there should be a general write-off or none, not this random selection of people who I do know happens BTW.

Also just because you upgraded your house and kept the previous house doesn't make you greedy or want to make a killing. I did that because I have no pension so the rent (if i can keep the house) would be my pension. Private pensions went whallop too so no-one is telling me that what I did was "greedy".

Easy for those to make judgement when over 400k people in the country will get the most bloated public sector pension income in the world when they retire. Private sector dont have that luxury so one way of securing a pension income was with property.

1. Who do you think will be paying for those general write off?

2. He was talking about buying houses upgrading them AND selling them on people yes people wanted to make money and were gready not all (hate generalisations)

3. Not all PS workers get as you call it a bloated pension. The lowers paid while yes nice would not be big. Also those pre 95 do not get a old age pension. (hate generalisations don't you).