# Evidence from the courts fails to support popular 'facts' behind repossessions



## Brendan Burgess (3 Nov 2015)

Good article by Karl Deeter 

*Evidence from the courts fails to support popular 'facts' behind repossessions*


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## Bronte (3 Nov 2015)

Actually I don't think it was a good article as it was difficult to follow. Normally I don't have this issue with Deeter.  Maybe it's just me.


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## Gerard123 (3 Nov 2015)

No, not just you, its heavy going reading it alright.  Could have been simplified by focusing on key messages.

Families virtually never get evicted, if you engage with the Bank and make any attempt to pay you are highly unlikely to get evicted. Only right by the way!

If you ignore the Bank, don't engage, don't bother talking to a solicitor, don't bother attending Court,  emigrate, don't pay any mortgage for four years, then you might (just MIGHT) have a repossession order made against you.  And that's only step one of the process. 

Media talk a lot of rubbish and headlines are sensational!!  Surprise Surprise.


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## Sarenco (3 Nov 2015)

I agree that Karl Deeter's writing style can be a bit difficult to follow sometimes.

Here's an article on the same data from the Mail on Sunday (I liked Brendan's line that instead of a tsunami of actual repossessions, we have a tsunami of recycled court hearings).


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## Bronte (3 Nov 2015)

Sarenco said:


> I agree that Karl Deeter's writing style can be a bit difficult to follow sometimes.
> 
> Here's an article on the same data from the Mail on Sunday (I liked Brendan's line that instead of a tsunami of actual repossessions, we have a tsunami of recycled court hearings).




It was only that one article I found Deeter difficult on, but that article from the Mail is much better, plus they have a nice chart, thanks for scanning it.  And I agree with you about Burgess's line of

_*a tsunami of actual repossessions, we have a tsunami of recycled court hearings*_

being superb.  It could have been a headline all on it's own.


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## Delboy (3 Nov 2015)

Bronte said:


> And I agree with your about Burgeess's line of
> 
> _*a tsunami of actual repossessions, we have a tsunami of recycled court hearings*_
> 
> being superb.  It could have been a headline all on it's own.



Solicitors got to earn a living too!


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## Bronte (3 Nov 2015)

Delboy said:


> Solicitors got to earn a living too!



The only ones paying solicitors is the banks, every delay means a new court date and more costs.  No money to be made by broker borrowers, they therefore have no legal representation. 

And who is paying the failed bank solicitors, the taxpayer.  Legal aid for the rich.


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## Sarenco (3 Nov 2015)

Bronte said:


> And who is paying the failed bank solicitors, the taxpayer.



The costs are actually largely being met through the high margins charged to borrowers that are continuing to meet their obligations. 

Maintaining high levels of unresolved non-performing loans requires lenders to impose a high cost of credit.


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## Lone Star (3 Nov 2015)

I've yet to see a Solicitor or Barrister in court with real passion - especially with regard to representing those defending against a bank.


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## Brendan Burgess (4 Nov 2015)

Sarenco said:


> I liked Brendan's line that instead of a tsunami of actual repossessions, we have a tsunami of recycled court hearings



Hi Sarenco.  When I read that line in the paper, I roared laughing.  I rang Bill and told him that I loved the quote, but that I don't think I had said it and maybe someone else to whom he had spoken for the article, had said it. But he said that I had said it.  So I will take the credit. 

Brendan


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## Brendan Burgess (4 Nov 2015)

Bronte said:


> Actually I don't think it was a good article as it was difficult to follow.



Hi Bronte

The vast majority of headlines and media commentary assert that there is a tsunami of repossessions. Karl got an article into the paper with a headline which challenged that.  That makes it a great article. 

I do agree that the simple message of "if you engage and pay something, you will not lose your home" should have been emphasised more.  

Brendan


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## Sarenco (4 Nov 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Hi Sarenco.  When I read that line in the paper, I roared laughing.  I rang Bill and told him that I loved the quote, but that I don't think I had said it and maybe someone else to whom he had spoken for the article, had said it. But he said that I had said it.  So I will take the credit.
> 
> Brendan



Hah! That's gas!


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## Gerry Canning (4 Nov 2015)

Tsunami of recycled cases is a lovely summation .
................................................................
It is obvious that our Laws/Courts/Judges invented recycling.
Go into any Court on any case and our learned judges recycle.
The old adage, {Justice delayed = justice denied} appears to not matter to our judges.
Their inability to dispense with cases in a fair and timely manner cannot all be put down to {that,s the law}.


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## elcato (4 Nov 2015)

Have a look at today's indo. Two cases where the judge has forced the lender to start again. It's a great little merry-go-round.


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## demoivre (4 Nov 2015)

Just as well we don't have a speedy repossession process or you're likely to have many families unnecessarily thrown out of their homes !


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## Brendan Burgess (4 Nov 2015)

elcato said:


> Have a look at today's indo. Two cases where the judge has forced the lender to start again.



Similar things have happened in a lot of cases. 

I have seen cases in Donegal where the lender applied to change the name on the proceedings from Irish Life and Permanent plc to permanent plc and the Registrar adjourned the cases.  

The hoops which the lenders have to jump through are absolutely ridiculous.  The borrower isn't even required to show up in court. 

The result is that the borrowers who pay their mortgages pay a much higher rate as overseas lenders are discouraged from entering the market. 

What astonishes me is why any lender would give out a mortgage in excess of 80% under these conditions. 

Brendan


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## 44brendan (4 Nov 2015)

demoivre said:


> Just as well we don't have a speedy repossession process or you're likely to have many families unnecessarily thrown out of their homes !


Or alternatively a large number of people who are not making any effort to meet their mortgages being retained in their homes. There has to be a downside for those who fail to contribute reasonably towards their mortgages. Also as Sarenco mentioned earlier it is not the banks who ultimately are meeting the costs of retaining these non-payers in their properties it is predominately SVR customers who continue to diligently meet their mortgage payments.
Their is a price to be paid for this type of intransigence and unlike what many of the Left parties might have you think it is not the "rich" that are meeting this cost it is mainly those of us who continue to meet our taxes and loan repayments.


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## Bronte (4 Nov 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Hi Sarenco.  When I read that line in the paper, I roared laughing.  I rang Bill and told him that I loved the quote, but that I don't think I had said it and maybe someone else to whom he had spoken for the article, had said it. But he said that I had said it.  So I will take the credit.
> 
> Brendan



You're underestimating the power of your off the cuff remark.  Sometimes spending a long time composing something to perfection is outdone by a throwaway remark, that remark encapsulates the reality.


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## demoivre (5 Nov 2015)

44brendan said:


> Or alternatively a large number of people who are not making any effort to meet their mortgages being retained in their homes. There has to be a downside for those who fail to contribute reasonably towards their mortgages.



I don't disagree but the fact that we have few repossessions can only mean that alternative arrangements are ultimately made between most  borrowers and banks. This suggest to me that speedier repossession procedures will lead to families being forced to leave their homes unnecessarily.


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## Brendan Burgess (5 Nov 2015)

Hi demoivre

There are about 13,000 cases before the courts. I would think that most of them are justified.  Some definitely are not. 

There are around 30,000 cases in arrears of over 2 years.  There are no comparable figures for other countries, because no other country tolerates it. 

The tragedy is that many of these arrears cases would have faced up to the problem earlier if they knew that there would be consequences. At the moment, there are no consequences for someone who chooses not to pay their mortgage. 

Brendan


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## Sarenco (5 Nov 2015)

One fact from Karl Deeter's article that jumped out at me was that 15% of the cases surveyed involved vacant properties.  That's a lot of homes that presumably would otherwise be available for housing purposes.  In other words, the on-going delays in the repossession process may actually be exacerbating the current housing crisis.

A home doesn't "disappear" once it's been repossessed by a lender.  A vacant home is still available to provide shelter for somebody as long as it's not locked up in a legal quagmire.


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## Brendan Burgess (5 Nov 2015)

I was in Letterkenny Circuit Court before the summer break. 198 cases and no repossessions. 

There was one which I was sure was a slam dunk.   Keys handed back. Nothing paid for years.  Substitute service properly served. 

But the Registrar asked "On what date were the keys handed back?" I wanted to scream at her "What difference does it make? They haven't paid anything for years. The summons server could not contact them to serve the civil bill." The solicitor's agent didn't know, so the case was adjourned - until January, if I recall correctly. So a vacant house will remain vacant for another 6 months at least. 

This is not in anyone's interest. 

Brendan


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## 44brendan (5 Nov 2015)

This is  a clear reflection of the current Court approach to re-possession proceedings in Ireland. I.e. The legal facts and the ongoing breaches of the loan agreement don't matter a fig. Judges appear to using a common discretion type approach in that they will only grant re-possession as a last ditch option. The legal case appears to be subservient to the social case in that judges are operating the legal system as it was never meant to be operated. As I posted before this is not a free pass where nobody has to bear the cost of the consequent losses suffered due to the long legal processes and the continuing delays in obtaining possession of a property where nothing is being paid on the associated loans.
Marry this up with the issue of high SVR's and the absence of any competition in the mortgage market!!!


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## demoivre (5 Nov 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> There are about 13,000 cases before the courts. I would think that most of them are justified. Some definitely are not.



And very few of these will end in actual possession orders being granted according to your research and Central Bank data ? So what happens to the majority of these cases? Struck out or possession order are the only two outcomes. If the data supports the view that very few possession orders are granted ( ie some alternative arrangement  is eventually reached between bank and borrower) then surely a speedier legal process, resulting in more repossessions, is in nobodies interest - homeowner, bank or government !


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## demoivre (5 Nov 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> I was in Letterkenny Circuit Court before the summer break. 198 cases and no repossessions.



How many were making their first appearance before the county registrar?


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## Brendan Burgess (5 Nov 2015)

I don't follow your logic. 

The system should operate as follows: 
Those in difficulty, but who have sustainable mortgages, and who are paying something, should be sorted out directly without the aggravation of the courts. 

Those who simply won't pay or won't recognise that their mortgage is unsustainable should be repossessed quickly. 



Brendan


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## Brendan Burgess (5 Nov 2015)

demoivre said:


> How many were making their first appearance before the county registrar?



I don't know how many were actual first appearances. I will check my  notes to see if I have that noted.  Here is the summary I did at the time. 

It was the hearing on June 20th


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## Bronte (5 Nov 2015)

elcato said:


> Have a look at today's indo. Two cases where the judge has forced the lender to start again. It's a great little merry-go-round.


 To be fair the case I saw with a person dead for years , it was only right the judge threw it out.  How incompetent are banks at this, and they have the highest paid lawyers.


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## elcato (5 Nov 2015)

Bronte said:


> To be fair the case I saw with a person dead for years , it was only right the judge threw it out. How incompetent are banks at this, and they have the highest paid lawyers.


But they were only requesting that the name(s) be changed to her husband only as he has acknowledged the debt and hasn't paid anything back in a while. If he was playing ball he would have forgone the issue years ago.


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## Bronte (5 Nov 2015)

elcato said:


> But they were only requesting that the name(s) be changed to her husband only as he has acknowledged the debt and hasn't paid anything back in a while. If he was playing ball he would have forgone the issue years ago.



Bank should have fixed it six years ago, this is not rocket science.  It's their own incompetence.  You can't change a driving without insurance charge to another person if you make a mistake as far as I know fir example.

What if the person was not dead but living somewhere else, but bank never sent documents to the correct person or address, procedures are there for a reason.


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## elcato (5 Nov 2015)

Bronte said:


> Bank should have fixed it six years ago, this is not rocket science. It's their own incompetence.


Or the legal, ahem, professionals perhaps ? I would be pretty sure in this case that it was a mistake. For instance, just because the bank was informed it doesn't mean the arrears department would be. Either way it's another case of more money for the legal eagles.


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## Delboy (5 Nov 2015)

demoivre said:


> If the data supports the view that very few possession orders are granted ( ie some alternative arrangement  is eventually reached between bank and borrower) then surely a speedier legal process, resulting in more repossessions, is in nobodies interest - homeowner, bank or government !


How is it in nobodies interest????


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## Gerry Canning (6 Nov 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> I was in Letterkenny Circuit Court before the summer break. 198 cases and no repossessions.
> 
> There was one which I was sure was a slam dunk.   Keys handed back. Nothing paid for years.  Substitute service properly served.
> 
> ...


I would have knowledge of two of those cases.
Forget law/legal, these two boyos should have been turfed out years ago.

I really do worry that our {learned} judges are on something ! and it ain,t a common sense pill.
They appear to have locked themselves into (find a reason not to do things) .
They also appear to be unaccountable, and listen to patent drivel from their solicitor cousins.
Brendan is credited with {tsunami of adjournments} type comment . 
He is so correct. 


..


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## Delboy (6 Nov 2015)

Would be interesting to see an update on the property portfolios/situations of many of the Judges/Barristers etc in this country. There were plenty of property investment syndicates drawn from the professions back in the boom


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## demoivre (9 Nov 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> I don't follow your logic.
> 
> The system should operate as follows:
> Those in difficulty, but who have sustainable mortgages, and who are paying something, should be sorted out directly without the aggravation of the courts.
> ...



A mortgage that is unsustainable today might be sustainable in six or twelve months months time, particularly when the borrowers are self employed or unemployed. The bank alone decides whether or not a mortgage is sustainable which is unfair. Any mortgage can be made sustainable using a PIA.
We don't have many repossessions in Ireland because clearly they aren't needed ! The banks don't go away quietly because of multiple adjournments so it seems to me that in most cases alternative arrangements between borrower and bank are arrived at, even if it does take four or five years ! Fast track repossessions will ensure that those arrangements can't happen.


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## demoivre (9 Nov 2015)

Delboy said:


> How is it in nobodies interest????



Banks don't want to repossess, the home owner doesn't want to be homeless and mass repossessions have social housing implications for the government.


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## demoivre (9 Nov 2015)

Brendan Burgess said:


> I don't know how many were actual first appearances. I will check my  notes to see if I have that noted.  Here is the summary I did at the time.
> 
> It was the hearing on June 20th
> 
> View attachment 966



All cases are adjourned on first appearance so I don't see anything enlightening about this court visit or indeed the 1947 cases covered over a five or six month period by yourself, Deeter and Coffey. Many of the 1947cases may well have been first time appearances so automatic adjournment takes place. The Central Bank figures confirm low repossession rates in Ireland so I'm struggling to fathom why three guys need to go to such lengths to prove the repossession process in Ireland is a lengthy one as virtually no repossession orders will be granted in the first six months after proceedings have been issued, and rightly so imo. !


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## epicaricacy (9 Nov 2015)

demoivre said:


> A mortgage that is unsustainable today might be sustainable in six or twelve months months time, particularly when the borrowers are self employed or unemployed. The bank alone decides whether or not a mortgage is sustainable which is unfair. Any mortgage can be made sustainable using a PIA.
> We don't have many repossessions in Ireland because clearly they aren't needed ! The banks don't go away quietly because of multiple adjournments so it seems to me that in most cases alternative arrangements between borrower and bank are arrived at, even if it does take four or five years ! Fast track repossessions will ensure that those arrangements can't happen.



Our case proves the point you are making. My wife and I are now working again and we'd be more than capable of making our mortgage repayments.

The bank moved too quickly to seek a solution in our opinion. We were in the last month of the 12 month MARP when they exerted enormous pressure of us to engage in a Voluntary Sale. We found their haste perplexing as we'd proactively communicated with them throughout and had been paying 80% of our interest repayments in addition to paying 20 months of our full mortage (capital plus interest) from our redundancies prior to entering MARP. 

In retrospect, the upshot of the bank's undue haste is that they lost not only the shortfall amount but a couple who would have been able to pay capital plus interest into the future (total of +550K remaining over the life time of the mortgage) as opposed to the purchase price of a fraction of the original sale price to a wealthy cash investor. My calculation is that the decision has cost them 180 shortfall amount plus lost interest payments of at least 200K.

In addition, our credit rating has been indefinitely destroyed and we're left in rental limbo.


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## Sarenco (9 Nov 2015)

demoivre said:


> Banks don't want to repossess, the home owner doesn't want to be homeless and mass repossessions have social housing implications for the government.



This is one of the most pervasive myths about the effect of repossessions.  Unless the lender decides to dynamite a repossessed home, this process will have zero impact on the amount of available housing stock.  All that will change is the ownership of that home.

The failure to deal with defaulting home loans in a timely, cost-effective way simply increases the aggregate cost of housing (rents and mortgage payments) which has long-term adverse consequences for the competitiveness of our economy.


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## Sarenco (9 Nov 2015)

demoivre said:


> Fast track repossessions will ensure that those arrangements can't happen.



Why so?  Surely timely repossessions would simply result in timely loan restructurings (to the extent that such restructurings are viable in the first place).


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## SeamusCoffey (9 Nov 2015)

demoivre said:


> All cases are adjourned on first appearance so I don't see anything enlightening about this court visit or indeed the 1947 cases covered over a five or six month period by yourself, Deeter and Coffey. Many of the 1947cases may well have been first time appearances so automatic adjournment takes place. The Central Bank figures confirm low repossession rates in Ireland so I'm struggling to fathom why three guys need to go to such lengths to prove the repossession process in Ireland is a lengthy one as virtually no repossession orders will be granted in the first six months after proceedings have been issued, and rightly so imo. !



Here are the outcomes Cork in October.  More cases were cased by the lenders than were adjourned per the practice direction.  Many of those not served are essentially the same as being adjourned by the lender as, in some cases, the lenders have chosen not the formally serve the proceedings on the borrower even though they have been issued.  The lender seeks a new return date.

 

Yes, the Central Bank statistics show very low repossessions.  But they also show that there has been a huge number of proceedings issued in the past 18 months since the legal lacuna of the 'Dunne' judgement was repaired.


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## Delboy (9 Nov 2015)

demoivre said:


> Banks don't want to repossess, the home owner doesn't want to be homeless and mass repossessions have social housing implications for the government.


As a future house buyer, it's in my interest that repossessions do happen so that a floor can be achieved in the market. Rather than this phoney war of the past 7 years that continues to support high house prices.


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