Posting this question on behalf of my parents who are not internet saavy.
This isn't the more common tracker issue where people lost their tracker coming off a fixed rate. My parents lost their tracker when they went to drawdown the first mortgage installment cheque.
My parents applied for a €200,000 15 year mortgage (for renovations) in late 2008 and were approved. There were several amended approvals for various reasons with the final amended loan approval in late March 2009 which was signed by my parents in April 2009. All loan approvals were trackers @ ECB + 1.2%.
Unfortunately planning and a few other issues delayed work starting on the house till November 2009.
Nowhere on the loan approval or documentation did it say there was a time limit on the Approval. Staff at the EBS as late as Sept or Oct IIRC said the money was there and ready to draw down. At no point did anyone at EBS say our approval was about to run out.
Building work starts in November and the house is gutted back to literally the bare 150 year old walls. My parents go to draw down the first payment for the builder only to be told that the loan approval is being renegotiated. They demanded that a car loan and a term loan be paid off. My self and siblings paid these for my parents. The EBS sent new loan approval forms but this time without a tracker, just standard variable. They knew they had us over a barrel with the house already gutted and now with nowhere to live but rented accommodation so we couldn't afford to pull out and fight a case or seek a mortgage elsewhere.
This caused a massive amount of stress at what was supposed to be a happy exciting time.
I tried to persuade my parents back then to seek legal advice but being older they are more deferential to authority and assumed that if EBS did this they must be within their rights to do this. They contacted the ombudsman a few weeks ago to mediate with the EBS about repayment of arrears, I persuaded them to add a postscript about our initial horrible treatment at the hands of the EBS wrt pulling tracker approval. Got a call from a rep of the Ombudsman to say that she agreed that all our trouble stemmed from the loss of the tracker but couldn't say whether we had any case, just that by mere mention of the word tracker we had triggered what was supposed to be an arrears mediation casefile to be moved to the ombudsmans tracker department. Job done as far as I'm concerned. At least we might finally get a yea or nay answer about whether we had a case.
Several weeks since that call from the ombudsman, so still none the wiser as to whether we have any kind of case.
The last seven years have been filled with stress and financial worry as my father tries to balance paying the full current mortgage repayments and keeping his sole trader business afloat keeping neither EBS or Revenue entirely happy. Can't afford to lose either the house or business.
Year 7 of the 200,000 mortgage and about 24,000 in arrears. Only ever missed two full payments but since 2011 theres been quite a few payments that might be 2,3,4 hundred short etc.
The thing is. Had we gotten the tracker we had approval for our repayments would have been about €1,400, in 2011 my parents wouldn't have fixed at 5.6%. Funny how the EBS was able to ring my father several times to tell him the fixed rate offer was about to expire but didn't find the time to call him back in 2009 to tell him his approval was about to expire. Anyway, needless to say, no sooner had my parents fixed at 5.6% did ECB rates start dropping to the floor. While our fixed payments went north of €2,000 a month, had we been on the tracker our monthly payments would have been dropping to 1,100 or 1,200 if I'm correct.
If we had a case that we should have never lost tracker approval, I'm sure it negates the fixed rate from 2011-2016 which is most of what our arrears stem from and given the difference in monthly repayments, far from underpaying every other month, redress would mean we had in fact massively overpayed every month for nearly the entirety of the last 7 years.
This isn't the more common tracker issue where people lost their tracker coming off a fixed rate. My parents lost their tracker when they went to drawdown the first mortgage installment cheque.
My parents applied for a €200,000 15 year mortgage (for renovations) in late 2008 and were approved. There were several amended approvals for various reasons with the final amended loan approval in late March 2009 which was signed by my parents in April 2009. All loan approvals were trackers @ ECB + 1.2%.
Unfortunately planning and a few other issues delayed work starting on the house till November 2009.
Nowhere on the loan approval or documentation did it say there was a time limit on the Approval. Staff at the EBS as late as Sept or Oct IIRC said the money was there and ready to draw down. At no point did anyone at EBS say our approval was about to run out.
Building work starts in November and the house is gutted back to literally the bare 150 year old walls. My parents go to draw down the first payment for the builder only to be told that the loan approval is being renegotiated. They demanded that a car loan and a term loan be paid off. My self and siblings paid these for my parents. The EBS sent new loan approval forms but this time without a tracker, just standard variable. They knew they had us over a barrel with the house already gutted and now with nowhere to live but rented accommodation so we couldn't afford to pull out and fight a case or seek a mortgage elsewhere.
This caused a massive amount of stress at what was supposed to be a happy exciting time.
I tried to persuade my parents back then to seek legal advice but being older they are more deferential to authority and assumed that if EBS did this they must be within their rights to do this. They contacted the ombudsman a few weeks ago to mediate with the EBS about repayment of arrears, I persuaded them to add a postscript about our initial horrible treatment at the hands of the EBS wrt pulling tracker approval. Got a call from a rep of the Ombudsman to say that she agreed that all our trouble stemmed from the loss of the tracker but couldn't say whether we had any case, just that by mere mention of the word tracker we had triggered what was supposed to be an arrears mediation casefile to be moved to the ombudsmans tracker department. Job done as far as I'm concerned. At least we might finally get a yea or nay answer about whether we had a case.
Several weeks since that call from the ombudsman, so still none the wiser as to whether we have any kind of case.
The last seven years have been filled with stress and financial worry as my father tries to balance paying the full current mortgage repayments and keeping his sole trader business afloat keeping neither EBS or Revenue entirely happy. Can't afford to lose either the house or business.
Year 7 of the 200,000 mortgage and about 24,000 in arrears. Only ever missed two full payments but since 2011 theres been quite a few payments that might be 2,3,4 hundred short etc.
The thing is. Had we gotten the tracker we had approval for our repayments would have been about €1,400, in 2011 my parents wouldn't have fixed at 5.6%. Funny how the EBS was able to ring my father several times to tell him the fixed rate offer was about to expire but didn't find the time to call him back in 2009 to tell him his approval was about to expire. Anyway, needless to say, no sooner had my parents fixed at 5.6% did ECB rates start dropping to the floor. While our fixed payments went north of €2,000 a month, had we been on the tracker our monthly payments would have been dropping to 1,100 or 1,200 if I'm correct.
If we had a case that we should have never lost tracker approval, I'm sure it negates the fixed rate from 2011-2016 which is most of what our arrears stem from and given the difference in monthly repayments, far from underpaying every other month, redress would mean we had in fact massively overpayed every month for nearly the entirety of the last 7 years.
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