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The NatWest owner said it wanted to “lift the pressure” on homeowners. A spokesman said: “We want to reassure customers.”
The Government last week urged lenders to grant a minimum three months breathing space.
RBS sold a near 60 per cent stake in the business to the Government last Friday - in exchange for a £20billion bailout.
Robert Bonnier, 38, splashed out £3million more than the property’s asking price last year.
He and wife Irene had planned to redevelop the home in West London’s exclusive Holland Park with a huge extension, an indoor swimming pool and cinema.
But the credit crunch has wiped 20 per cent off its value.
Bonnier - who made and lost a £150million fortune on a dotcom enterprise before going into banking - has racked up debts said to be around £15million.
His agent said: “You only have to look to see what’s happened to him to understand why the house has been repossessed.”
The Council of Mortgage Lenders said it had never heard of repossession of such an expensive property.
One of them is IT consultant James Cousins, 41, from Sittingbourne, Kent, who lost his job with Lloyds TSB eight months ago.
As James, married to Bev, 48, struggled over the next few months to find work to pay his bills, his mortgage lender began the process of claiming back his three-bed house.
Here, CAROLINE IGGULDEN brings you his diary of the fight for his home…
February 1 2008: Negotiate a fixed-rate mortgage for two years at 5.99 per cent with Mortgage Express, owned by Bradford & Bingley.
Payments on the £190,000 loan will be £956 a month plus £100 to repay arrears from November 2007, when I was jobless for a month.
March 1: Start a new contract as an IT consultant with Lloyds TSB, on £40,000 a year.
September 1: Contract with Lloyds TSB ends but I have another job to go to.
September 5: New position withdrawn due to downturn. Gutted.
September 8: Phone Mortgage Express to explain I have lost my job. Pay £800 on mortgage.
October 1: Receive a standard letter from Mortgage Express highlighting my arrears, which means £30 monthly admin fee.
October 27: Start a new IT job.
December 1: Lose job after just five weeks. Can’t believe it.
December 2: Tell lender about losing my job but manage mortgage payment of £956.
April 3: Mortgage Express call to say the next stage of repossession will start soon as my arrears are now around £4,500.
April 6: My wife is doing double shifts at Sainsbury’s.
April 17: Receive a letter from Mortgage Express saying legal proceedings will begin to repossess my home. I mention Shelter said I should be eligible for the Mortgage Rescue Scheme announced in the Budget.
May 3: Fantastic news. My lender and I have an agreement: For five months they will suspend repossession as long as I pay £300 per month. If, after five months I still haven’t got a job, I would be eligible for the Government’s Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme for two years, where the Government pays 66 per cent of mortgage interest.
Not out of the woods yet but at least I can concentrate on my job search without worrying myself sick.
Talk to your lender, keep them informed of your situation
Pay whatever you can towards your mortgage, your lender will see you in a better light
Don’t be afraid to seek advice from organisations. Shelter have offered me brilliant advice
Don’t be ashamed. Talk to people, such as your local MP, who might be aware of help you are entitled to
December 5: Hear about a mortgage rescue scheme but can’t find details on Gov website.
December 15: Apply for dozens of jobs, like I do every day now.
January 3 2009: Make a £200 payment towards mortgage.
January 10: Start a part-time taxi-driving job for extra cash.
January 26: Wife Bev is made redundant by Clinton Cards.
February 13: Mortgage Express have told an agent from their pre-litigation team to visit me, which will cost me £94.
February 20: The pre-litigation agent arrives unannounced. He asks me to fill in an income/ expenditure form.
February 28: Stressed, so visit my doctor, who prescribes anti-depressants. I’ve worked for 20 years and never thought I could fall in to such a desperate situation as I am in now.
March 10: Call the UK’s leading debt charity, CCCS, for advice. They say I could file for full bankruptcy to release me from all debt but I would lose everything.
March 14: This month we managed to pay £600 to Mortgage Express because Beverley worked as many hours as possible before her job ended and my stepdaughters Sharrona, 24, and Chantelle, 21, paid extra housekeeping.
March 31: Job interview for the NHS in Cambridge (125 miles from home). They say no thanks.
Despite Government promises to help keep people in their homes in the downturn, repossessions are soaring. More than 100 homes a day are being seized by lenders - that’s a massive 50 per cent up on last year and the highest level since the early Nineties.
But as RICHARD DYSON explains, not everyone is a loser.
The investors - making a killing
The dinner-jacketed staff are welcoming, the sales patter slick, the surroundings plush. Welcome to the first auction of repossessed homes by American firm REDC (Real Estate Disposition Corporation).
Tempted by the growing number of home repossessions in Britain, REDC launched its UK arm, auctiontoday.co.uk, last month to offer a ‘wide selection of properties at auction prices’. More than 400 homes are listed on its website - all repossessions.
The function room at the Hilton Hotel in Gateshead near Newcastle upon Tyne is packed with eager bidders keen to pick up a bargain.
The number of people struggling to pay their mortgage is growing by almost 740 a day, raising fears of another surge in repossessions
Another 68,000 homebuyers fell into arrears in the final three months of 2008, according to grim data from the Financial Services Authority. It took the total to almost 377,000 - a 31% leap in 12 months. The average debt has also risen almost 20% to £5,473.
Repossessions actually dipped slightly in the quarter to 13,028 as lenders bowed to Government pressure to make it the last resort. But the 46,750 total for last year - 128 a day - was still up 68% on 2007.
Adam Sampson, of housing charity Shelter, urged the FSA to force lenders to give more help to struggling families.
“With tens of thousands of families living in the shadow of repossession, the FSA must ensure that lenders treat struggling borrowers fairly,” he said. “The rise in arrears and repossessions has been fuelled by irresponsible lending.
“The FSA and Government must re-write the rule book to ensure the days of feckless lending are never repeated.”
Housing Minister Margaret Beckett said: “We are determined to do everything possible to ensure repossession is always a last resort, and have taken decisive action to help households facing difficulties right now.
“As well as agreeing a three-month minimum period before lenders seek to repossess, we have put in place more free debt and legal advice, and have increased support to help people pay their mortgage if they lose their job.”
This was found: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/city-news/2009/03/18/repossession-fears-grow-as-740-more-people-a-day-can-t-pay-their-mortgages-115875-21207351/
Northern Rock has suffered losses of £45.9m since 2001 as a result of having to repossess property on its books.
Data from the nationalised lender’s securitisation vehicle Granite shows that in December alone the figure for repossession losses came in at £8.7m.
This amounts to an average loss per property of £ 19,348.
Of the properties that Northern Rock has not repossessed, some 6.3% of borrowers are behind with mortgage payments by at least a month.
The figures also reveal that 3,719 mortgage loans under Granite are now worth less than what was originally loaned out by Northern Rock.
It means that 1.33% of borrowers with assets under the Granite trust were in negative equity as at December last year.
The Granite securitisation vehicle does not represent all of Northern Rock’s mortgage book, but does give a clear indication of the scale of losses the nationalised lender is now facing.
A report by the Centre for Policy Studies has called on the British Government to learn the lessons of the 1990s and save the ‘tsunami’ of repossessions expected for this year.
The think tank, which was established by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher in 1974, stands to promote the principles of a free society and free market economics.
Their call comes a few weeks after church leaders in the UK wrote to the Prime Minister calling for an economic recovery plan to be launched in the midst of the global recession.
Entitled ‘Save 100,000s homes from repossession’ the report from the CPS welcomes the limited steps taken by the Government – such as changes to stamp duty – but argues that these would only help a few households.
The think tank warns that if the Government does not act, repossession orders could exceed those in the 1990s.
Report author Natalie Elphicke, said: “The Courts have huge discretion in determining civil claims and can postpone, adjourn, stay or suspend a claim for repossession. If we are to stop the tsunami of repossessions then the Government must recognise the role of Civil Courts rather than ignore them.”
She added: “Court guidance for dealing with repossession hearings should be improved to assist those in need. There is a growing amount of case law that will help people stay in their home, but no clear guidance.”
Such reforms would be practical and would take account of each individual’s unique circumstances, she said.
For more information, http://www.religiousintelligence.co.uk/news/?NewsID=3863
HOMEOWNERS in Johannesburg continue to struggle to meet mortgage repayments because of the prevailing credit crunch. The FNB residential property barometer, a survey of the property market based on data from local estate agents, indicates that in the fourth quarter of last year most homes were put up for sale by homeowners trying to downscale due to financial pressure.
The survey revealed that a total of 26% of homeowners across all income brackets were opting to sell because mortgage repayments were becoming too difficult to meet.
The recent interest-rate cut is good news and will provide at least some relief to over-burdened homeowners.
However, there are ways of easing the stress of bond repayments. Mark Beckett, CEO of Bond Choice, says: “Approach your bank as soon as you realise you are in financial difficulty. The banks want to assist clients and consider it a last resort to repossess homes. “Running away from the responsibility only compounds the problem in the future.” He says that extending the home- loan period from 20 to 25 or even 30 years will help to reduce the monthly instalment amount.
For more about this issue, http://allafrica.com/stories/200902130483.html
HOME repossessions are soaring in the credit crunch according to a shock new report — with one desperate family forced to live in a pigeon shed.
The Council Of Mortgage Lenders said there were 27,100 repossessions in 2007 and warned that this year there could be a 65 per cent rise to 45,000.
One family hit by the crisis are the Galloways. They had their three- bedroom semi repossessed in June when they fell behind on repayments.
Checkout operator Debbie, 31, and husband Philip, 42, have six children aged between four and 14.
While the cash-strapped couple sleep in a relative’s pigeon shed the children are having to live with another member of the family.
Distraught Philip says: “We worked hard and did our best to buy a house, to get on the property ladder and have something for our kids. “We tried to pay and tried to get help to sort it out when things got tough . . . but we were too late. No one would help us.”
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/article1519444.ece
Some 137 homes were repossessed in Bath in just nine months last year, according to figures from the Ministry of Justice. But there are hopes that the number of repossessions will fall in this year following new Government guidelines to banks.
Forty homes had mortgage possession claims issued from July-September, a rise of eight per cent on the same period the previous year. This took the figure for mortgage possession claims to 137 in nine months, a rise of 20 per cent on the previous year.
But experts say it is hard to determine the actual figure as the statistics do not take into account people who voluntarily give the keys back to lenders, or who managed to hang on to their homes.
This fact was found at: www.thisisbath.co.uk/news