CLP are the lead agency in the Bham County Court Duty Possession Scheme. I am the only one here who does the mortgage cases (along with colleagues from a number of other firms in the area and the Court Welfare Office). My anecdotal yet very real evidence about the increase in number of mortgage possession cases is this: MAY 2007 - 18 mortgage lists (each of around 25-30 claims per list) in Birmingham County Court; MAY 2008 - 25 mortgage lists in Birmingham County Court. You can prove ‘owt with numbers, but by my maths that’s almost a 39% increase in a year. Further, we seem to be are advising (on the Duty Possession scheme) more people who cannot afford to pay the instalment let alone anything off the arrears (a significant amount of those cases are because of fixed/discount rates ending). Norgan is a very helpful case, but even it can’t magic money from somewhere! Further, house prices in the area have certainly come down and properties are taking longer to sell. So there’s less you can do unless an arguable defence comes up - and it’s sometimes difficult to spot a defence when you have about 5-10 minutes with each client.

More worryingly, some Defendant’s attend court clutching letters from Companies that “purchase and rent back” to you - you get an indication in the paperwork of a five year rent guarantee BUT with a one year assured shorthold tenancy. Oh, and the agreed sale price with such companies is always something around the mortgage redemption figure plus a couple of grand on top (to keep you quiet). Reprehensible.

I was doing advocacy in mortgage repos in the early 1990’s and I never believed mortgage repos would be as high again or negative equity would return! Like a rabid dog, it’s back, drooling and biting hard. £10million isn’t going to muzzle it. (Really sorry about the pun; it’s monday, I’ve got 3 County Court appeals to issue in the next few days and it amused me)

Only a limited number of CABx have adequetely trained advisers the vast majority of bureaux simply aim to negotiate an arrangement of sorts with lenders, simply because they are unaware of what other valid arguments that could be run.

Ahmad Butt
Director IPR
6-9 Manor Gardens
London
N7 6LA

Tel: 020 7561 3685
Fax: 020 7561 3682

Islington Peoples Rights is a company limited by guarantee Registered in England no. 1753440 Charity Commission No. 1077688

The content of this message is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the person to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender and please delete the message from your system immediately. You should not copy it or use it for any purpose or disclose its contents to any other person.

All liability is excluded to the extent permitted by law for any claims arising as a result of the use of this medium to transmit information by or to Islington Peoples’s Rights.

In any event it’s probably £10 million that no one will actually ever see.

ITV news did a feature about your last point about the poor tenants. I tried to find the link but failed miserably.

Agreed on the multiple loans. Secured loans seem particularly eager to repossess.

Of course the other big issue is the repossession of lots of buy to let, making for a lot of tenants losing homes in circumstances where they can do nothing about it.

I’d be interested to know the number of self declared mortgages that were taken out where people lied about their income. I’m sure tiis is a big unknown as both sides at the time thought they would benefit.

A lot of people don’t just have 1 mortgage but also 1 or 2 secured loans tied to the property to.

I see so many people in negative equity using over 50 pct on their income to pay their mortgage and secure loans.

The banks, having handed out loans like penny sweets to anyone who asked are now having a panic because they have suddenly realised that they might not get their money back - this was fine as long as house prices kept going up - lots of equity - but once they stagnate or fall, the bank’s money is at risk. As a result, the banks have over-reacted and aren’t lending to anybody much at all unless they have lots of money themselves already.