Case Study: Help! We think we’re going to be repossessed.

A young family had saved and saved in order to buy their own home.

They had maxed themselves out completely on the mortgage and were already struggling when the husband lost his job.

They fell behind with the mortgage and ended up using loads and credit cards to stay afloat. Their situation spiralling day by day.

They were naturally very worried about losing their home, the husband was experiencing a lot of anxiety about the situation and the wife was extremely overwhelmed with the whole process so they called me to discuss selling their home before the arrears mounted up too high.

As always, I directed them first to debt charities and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, but I also went through their finances with them.

It turned out that their situation wasn’t quite as dire as they had thought, a lot of savings could be made on that very day with things like cancelling SKY TV (saving themselves over £100 a month!) and a few other non-essentials. 

I also spoke with them about shopping around for things more, I discovered they’d been letting all their insurance policies auto-renew, and saved lots more but renewing those with cheaper suppliers.

Finally, there was some general money management education. The wife had weekly bills that she wasn’t managing well, meaning she was running out of money halfway through the month and having to turn to the credit card. Simply budgeting for all the weekly bills at the start of the month and putting that money aside was a game-changer.

With this budget, they could see much clearer how to proceed. They were lucky enough to get a 3k loan from one of their mums to clear the bulk of the arrears.

I knew the mortgage company they were with and they are very good at working with people if they communicate well so we put a plan in action immediately for them to speak with the mortgage company showing their revised budget and proving they could continue to pay the mortgage and stick to a repayment plan for the arrears.

I showed them what they needed to do at court to request a repayment plan, should it get to that, but thankfully the mortgage company accepted the plan they put forward so it didn’t even get to court.

So this is the case study as a sale that never was! And I couldn’t be happier, I still drive past the property regularly and smile when I see that they’re still living in the property they thought they’d have to sell.

I’m Joanne. I’ve lived and breathed property for longer than I care to remember! This blog provides advice and support with problems surrounding property, and life in general.

Previously on the blog…