Real Estate Innovation

Preventing Repossession - Steps You Can Take To Save Your Home

Your account with your lender is “in arrears” when you have missed some mortgage payments for whatever reason. Once you are in arrears, having missed payments for a couple of months or more, your lender is likely to seek court action in order to take steps to regain ownership or “repossess” your property. If you fail to contact your lender and try to reach agreement, the lenders only option to get their money back is to take control of your property and sell it. They must do this through the courts.

Although repossession should be taken seriously, the fact that a lender is taking court action doesn’t mean that its time to throw in the towel. You do have some options but the main thing is to take some action and act quickly. Options to consider include refinancing your property, selling your home or borrowing the money from friends or family to clear the arrears.

Talking to your lender is the first step you should take, before looking at other options. Your lender may be able to provide some solutions to help you resolve the situation and bring your account up to date. This may include switching your mortgage to interest only, extending the mortgage term or putting a new payment plan in place. Whether your lender can help or not, it is important to be able to show a judge you have made efforts to communicate.

Assuming you do have to go to court, then its worth noting that although serious, its far less formal than you may think. Possession hearings are held in the county court and are in private rooms. The lender is likely to be represented by a legal clerk. You, the lender and the judge will all be seated at a table and generally hearings only last ten minutes. Its your opportunity to explain what’s happened and aim to reach agreement on clearing the debt so you can keep your home.

At the hearing the judge will be looking to identify what you can do to pay off the arrears and meet your commitment for the normal monthly payment. You could offer to pay off all or a significant sum towards the arrears. Clearing the arrears will mean the lender has no reason to possess the property. Another option is to offer to meet further monthly payments in full, with a contribution towards the arrears. In this case the judge may grant a suspended possession order allowing you to keep your home provided you meet this commitment. Whether the judge is likely to grant extra time for options such as refinancing or selling your home will be dependent on how far these have progressed.

When considering selling or refinancing your home as options to remove the threat of repossession, it’s important to consider that the element of control you have over them. With repossession looming, the amount of time available is short and therefore the more control you have the better. Refinancing will rely on the speed of a broker. Therefore shop around and get recommendations for a broker used to acting quickly for people in your situation. Selling your home will rely on a good estate agent that prices your property realistically and markets it well. You’ll also want them to check out the buyers financial situation before accepting an offer to reduce risk of the transaction falling through.

A suspended possession order may be granted at the court hearing by the judge. This will allow you to stay in your home provided you adhere to any terms that the judge has stipulated. For example, this may be to make full monthly payments in future together with a small contribution towards arrears. The judge may also suspended the order to allow you to follow through with any other proposal you have e.g. refinancing your home or selling it. If you fail to convince the judge to suspend or waive the order then the lender will be granted possession and you’ll have a matter of a few weeks before eviction.

Organisations are available to help homeowners facing repossession. These are registered charities or government funded organisations, the most well known being Shelter, NationalDebtline and CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau). It’s important to recognise that you are in difficulty, face up to it and take action and get some help from organisations such as these. That way you give yourself the best chance of saving your home from repossession.