Caroline Lennon Nally Posterwoman for mortgage arrears


From the article I posted earlier;

She paid €385,000 for the property, but her bill came to €412,000 by the time she had paid stamp duty and legal fees.

Stuck in a 5.5% fixed-rate mortgage, negotiated in 2007 when she bought her home, she found it increasingly difficult to meet her €1,470 mortgage repayments, which were fixed at interest only until 2012.

Re The 2.5k you mention;
Wouldnt she have to earn approx 5 thousand euro to service this grooming bill?
 

This bit bothers me. She's not stuck at all, she's nearing the end of an agreement she entered into.
 
She cannot now afford the interest-only for five years per her agreement.
Notwithstanding any "hits" she may have taken financially in the interim, how was she going to proceed after 2012?
Re The 2.5k you mention;
Wouldnt she have to earn approx 5 thousand euro to service this grooming bill?
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You mean in terms of gross income and taxable income?
Depends on what she earns but putting it at 40% - yes, something like that.

It equates to the cost of a good holiday for one person somewhere reasonably well kitted out.
I cannot help feeling that we're not seeing the whole picture being reported in relation to this story.
 
Folks,

You're being a bit hard on the woman. Any of us who have to dress professionally probably spend more on our appearance than we actually think we do.

A professional guy has to buy suits, shoes, shirts and ties and get his hair cut. She spends €2,500 per annum and is being pilloried for it. She's a woman for starters so hair is far more expensive and she has to buy makeup too.

There's a hint of a witchhunt here. Those who haven't been stung by Ireland's property collapse are coming across as very smug. In most cases, such people have just been lucky - They were either at the right age or stage of their life during the boom.
 

+1 Very well put, it captures the essence of this thread.
 
The point is not that she's spending €2.5K on maintaining her appearance.
That was symptomatic of how this woman's predicament was presented.

The point is that she looks like she cannot pay her mortgage after 2012.
I'm not smug about it but it puts her current concerns into perspective.

I agree that discussing this article may have dragged us off topic.
However it enlightened me re the presentation of such issues.

In that sense it supported the original topic.
 

I saw the programme.

She wasn't happy at having a bank employee give her grief over spending €50 per week on work related grooming. The question is not whether €50 a week is excessive. I think when you analyse it, it's not excessive but it's certainly inflammatory in a discussion such as this.

I do not think it's appropriate for the bank employee to give the woman grief over that level of spending.
 

I'm not sure here either. She was pretty indignant about it, but for me that's misplaced pride. She can't honour her debts and is in danger of losing her home that she worked hard for. She needs to swallow her pride and accept the people she owes €400k to (ultimately us) cannot let her continue in a bubble where rather than adjust her lifestyle she simply stops paying back the people who lent her money in good faith.

Saying she'd rather burn the house is another indicator of an inability to swallow her pride.

A lot of people, like the cork couple in property shock, have instinctively done the right things i.e. accept your means have been cut and try adjust your lifestlye expectations. For me, the impression I got from most of the frontline examples was one of people burying their head in the sand and refusing to accept, or even take contol of, their new circumstances.
 
I think what needs to be said about Caroline Lennon Nally has been said. If someone has some new information to add on her case,by all means please do add it. But please stop discussing her make-up bill, her civil service salary etc. Overall this thread is raising important issues. Please stay on topic. And please calm down a bit. If someone posts something inappropriate, ignore it or report it. Don't let fly at them.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I think what needs to be said ... has been said.
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It needs to be summarized.

This situation appears to be as follows, couched in very carefully constructed language Brendan and not naming names overtly - this is in fact a general case scenario.

- somebody may have decided to jump on the property ladder for five years on an interest-only mortgage
- somebody may have borrowed way beyond what they could afford on a normal mortgage to maximize their putative "gain"
- somebody may have therefore intended to "flip" the house as an investment vehicle
- somebody may have intended to minimize capital gains tax because the property was used as a sole domicile.

Now that disaster is looming because of the crash, a Facebook page is started on which all sorts of things are being claimed.
One things that doesn't appear to be claimed is - "I speculated on the bubble and got caught".
How many people are this position because of speculation?

Now let's review those people living in large expensive houses.
The distillation of this thread gives us a tool with which to view their situation - a simple pair of questions.

"Was this a genuine attempt to purchase a home with the mortgagee having a reasonable expectation of being able to pay for it?"

"Was this an attempt to make a vast profit on a rising market, the bigger the mortgage amount, the bigger the anticipated gain?"
 
Brendan is right. It is not fair to pick on one individual without knowing her. AAM is not hello magazine. Post comments on her facebook page if people want.
 
I was amazed by Caroline Lennon-Nally's attitude of entitlement. She doesn't seem to realise that all the money she put in to the house is gone, she is looking for it to be someone else's money. This is the same person that told the bank that she needs €2,600 per year for personal grooming. I was entirely unsurprised to find that she worked in HSE management. I suppose that we have all created the environment that has led to her deluded state.

She is a very bad example of the real suffering and anxiety of mortgage holders.
 
Well done on tackling her last night Brendan.
 
gaius said:
Well done on tackling her last night Brendan.
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Thanks gaius. This thread was excellent in preparing me for the discussion.

What programme was that please?
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The Late Debate starts at around 11 minutes in

Also is that the lady who was on another programme about a year or two ago?
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She was on the Frontline - unchallenged.
She has been in the Indo - unchallenged
She has been in the Examiner - unchallenged
She has even been in the Financial Times - unchallenged
She was on last night's Six One News - unchallenged
She was on last night's Nine O'Clock News - unchallenged.

So, I redressed the balance a bit by challenging her.

Brendan
 
I got a lot of extra information about Caroline Lennon Nally last night.

She is now €50,000 in arrears.

She paid €1,000 a month up to the end of 2011 and hasn't paid anything since.

I suggested that she had traded up and she told me she hadn't. I had assumed she had, as she had paid so much stamp duty.

Later she said "I sold a house" but when I pressed her on this, she said that she didn't trade up. She had mortgages since she was 20.

Her current interest rate is 1.9%. But she is still refusing to pay anthing.

Her annual interest would be €6,000 or €500 a year, but paying that would make her a "glorified renter".


In my opinion she is a classic case of a strategic defaulter who is hoping to get some deal by being difficult. As I said on the programme, the bank should be able to repossess her home, get a judgment for the shortfall and they should get some form of charge on her salary to make sure she pays the shortfall.

There are so many people really struggling - it is most unfortunate that the case for debt write-off is damaged by the likes of Caroline Lennon Nally.l
 
Listened to it. She refused to say what she was actually earning, only that it went down by X%. She knows damn well she'd lose any sympathy if people knew what she was earning, as she can well afford to pay to pay her mortgage, but - "Boo Hoo I want my Nama".
Strategic defaulter, feeling sorry for herself as she is in negative equity.
 
Stuck in a 5.5% fixed-rate mortgage, negotiated in 2007 when she bought her home, she found it increasingly difficult to meet her €1,470 mortgage repayments, which were fixed at interest only until 2012.
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Mortgage|€320k
Original fixed rate|5.5%
Annual interest|€17,640
Monthly repayment|€1,470
Current rate|1.9%
Annual interest|€6,000
Monthly repayment - interest only|€500
Monthly repayment over 15 years|€2,000
So the interest cost of her mortgage has dropped from €17,640 to €6,000 a year i.e. a 65% cut.

She just does not want to pay the capital.

I am trying to reconcile the figures

Cost of house|€385k
stamp duty @ 6%|€23k
Legal costs|€4k
Total cost|€412k
Mortgage|€ 320k
so deposit must have been|€92k
If her salary was €80k, then she was borrowing 4 times her salary
If her salary was €60k, then she was borrowing over 5 times her salary - high, but certainly not considered reckless at the time.

She said that had worked since the age of 18 and had mortgages since the age of 20. So presumably she has benefited in the past from house price increases.

If her house had increased in value since she bought it, you can be quite sure that she would be able to meet her monthly repayments.
 
I suspect that she wants her debt dealt with before she retires as she may have to use her lump sum on retirement to clear the debt and she clearly does not wish to do that. I can't say that I sympathise with her case. I take care of my own debts. I don't try to unburden myself of them and impose them on the taxpayer.

It wouldn't be too difficult to figure out what her salary scale is. Her name is rather unusual and she says she's a public servant.

Marion
 
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