Caroline Lennon Nally Posterwoman for mortgage arrears

Well done on the programme,Brendan. I don't think she really expected to be challenged. I feel sorry for those genuinely struggling,and definitely agree that they need to be helped. However I don't think this lady is in that category,and I am sure she isn't the only one who will try to avail of a write down, based, as far as I can see,on the fact that she doesn't want to pay back what she borrowed, rather than genuinely not being able to afford it.
 
There is an excellent post on The Property Pin which estimates her gross income and net income

net income 2009|49,719
net income 2013|42,526
Drop |€7,193

Her income may have dropped by more since she bought the house in 2007.

In any event, she is still earning a high net salary so can afford her repayments.
 

But did she borrow 320k Brendan? I checked out an amoritisation calculator and using her figures, this does not appear to be the case.

The facts as she has given them:

She is now mid 50's.
Meaning that in 2007, she was almost 50.

She says her repayments were 1,470 per month.

She said her agreed interest rate fixed from the start of the mortgage was 5.5%.

Now assuming that she got a 20 year mortgage then the most she could have borrowed, according to the calulator, at that interest rate for that repayment is[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]2[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]10k.[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This [/FONT]would have put her at almost 70 at the end of the mortgage.

A 25 year mortgage would put the amount borrowed at 240k and her at 75.

It looks to me like she put a huge deposit on the house and wants it back. Please..
 
Thanks Brendan, this confused me.

"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."

I have to say I'm still confused.

How could she take out a mortgage on a fixed rate and then renegotiate it to a tracker prior to the pay cuts?

Sorry to be a nuisance, but it doesn't make sense to me. She repaid 50k, which I took to be in 07-08-09, she only got into arrears in December 2010, one year later, then how can she claim that the paycut caused her problems?

Thanks.
 
How could she take out a mortgage on a fixed rate and then renegotiate it to a tracker prior to the paycuts?
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It was quite common for people to take out tracker mortgages, but fix for a few years. There was no renegotiation - it was agreed at the start.

She repaid 50k, which I took to be in 07-08-09,
Click to expand...
Where did she say she repaid €50k?

Maybe she paid €50k interest? €17,600 for 3 years would be around €50,000, which would have been late 2007 to late 2010.

On The Late Debate, she said she paid €1,000 a month during 2011, but nothing since. (On the Front Line in November 2011, she said that she had been putting €1,000 a month into a bank account instead of paying it to the lender. So that seems to conflict with what she said on The Late Debate)
 
The only 50K she mentioned was arrears. She mentioned it's value was 170K and NE was 180K. So she currently owes 350K.

She also mentioned that she had paid 150K. But it was never ever clear whether this was interest, capital, deposit, legal fees etc. She also said she didn't want to pay 60K over the next 5 years (this works out at 12K a year - presumably 7K interest at 1.9% and some capital).
 
Thanks for taking the time to reply Brendan.

Brendan Burgess said:
It was quite common for people to take out tracker mortgages, but fix for a few years. There was no renegotiation - it was agreed at the start.
Click to expand...

This isn't what she did though, I listened to her again to try and decipher what her position is. You ask her about what she has paid since 2010, she says "I paid 1k per month for the first year and at the end of that it was reverting back to IO, which was always 1500".

She says " unfortunately I was prudent and fixed for the first 5 years at 5.5%".

In fairness to you, you try to sift through this and she says "I had Interest only for the first 5 years."

Now this is where it does not make any sense. If we go back to the start, the 320k @5.5% over 25 years was close to 2k. She was IO on this from the start. Are we to believe that as soon as she drew down this mortgage for 5.5%, that she immediately looked for Interest only and the bank agreed?

The bank then offered her the 1.9% interest rate which was 100 euro less than the 5.5% Interest only, but it would have been repaying the capital, so her assertion that this was "twice the price of renting" was incorrect.

And even at that, this very kind offer meant that her total repayment (interest and capital) was 700 euro less than the original agreement of 320k @5.5%.



She then goes on to say, "If I pay them another 60k over the next 5 years, I have 5 years less to work....what I owe is not sustainable over the length of time I have left working. But she thought it was sustainable until she was 75. For some reason she has knocked 10 years off the original agreement that she entered.

She is mid 50's now, she was close to 50 when she took out the mortgage over 25 years.

Brendan Burgess said:
Where did she say she repaid €50k?
Click to expand...

Article in the Examiner.

"She said she has already paid about €50,000 in mortgage repayments to her bank, a size-able deposit when she bought her home, as well as stamp duty. "

Lots of holes, you were also correct to point out to her that she absolutely gained from selling her marital home at the top of the boom.

Finally, where did she get the sizeable sum of money to offer the bank? Maybe next time you meet you may ask her this?

Thanks.

CS
 
Listen, there's really no great mystery to this. Like a lot of people at the time, she wanted a house as both a home to live in, and an "investment" for retirement. The bigger the house, the bigger the investment, and the banks were willing to lend silly multiples of income which she took advantage of.

Now that the investment has gone bad, she still wants a home to live in, but wants out of the investment. Her circumstances haven't changed all that radically -- it just doesn't suit her to pay for something that will no longer leave her as comfortably off in retirement. In her self-absorbed version of reality, that's not "sustainable". By that, she means that she'd like the rest of us to pay for her failed investment, while she keeps her home.

Quite simple really.
 
I think it's clear to many here what her motive is. But to many others she is hailed as a hero, a crusader against the banks.

She has put herself out there as someone who has a distressed mortgage due to paycuts. She is claiming inability to pay.

People have a right to go through the information she has supplied and question it. Too few journalists bother to do it, so it's left to others like Brendan to tease out the finer details.
 
commonsense said:
But to many others she is hailed as a hero, a crusader against the banks.
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Is she really, though? Her 2,500 "followers" seem pretty ephemeral -- no more than viewers of her Facebook page. I'm sure plenty of people will be interested in the outcome she achieves. I'm equally sure nobody will be surprised when her ploy is ultimately unsuccessful.
 
Hi dub

She has gone unchallenged on the Front Line, The Independent, the Examiner, and the News. A huge number of people have seen her and cheered her and would have believed her story. People believe anyone who criticises the banks.

As far as I know, the only programme she was challenged on was The Late Debate. I don't know how many listeners it has.

Brendan
 
If people like the lady in question want to become poster girls/boys they should be prepared to put the full facts including the loan and income paper work on the record. It is a lazy and sloppy media who do not demand this and they are not doing either their readers or listeners any service. The least that the media should demand is accuracy and if the proof is not forthcoming do not publish.
I get the impression from reading this thread that everything that the lady said on the show was not totally accurate for whatever reason.
 

I listened to that link last night and I agree 100% with you Brendan.
Ms Nally is a very bad poster-child for those she claims to speak for.
 
Purple said:
Ms Nally is a very bad poster-child for those she claims to speak for.
Click to expand...


And that is why I have such a problem with her.

Those of us who make the case for people who have unsustainable mortgages and need an exit solution have our case weakened by people like CLN. The lenders claim that if they do deals with people strategic defaulters like CLN will take advantage of them.

Brendan
 
Are the people commenting in the media totally independent of the issue?

Are people, for example Caroline and George, being given a free ride by high-profile members of the media because there is a hope that strategic defaulters will become the norm/acceptable rather than the pariahs in society?

Marion
 
Marion

probably some of the media are in debt also and deals for all would benefit them. And the rest of the Irish media are probably just too inept to bother asking or even thinking of the questions!!!
All my opinion of course!
 
In my experience, the media does try to get a bit of balance. But it's very difficult to get people to talk about mortgage arrears on live TV or radio.

Having said that, I don't think that the public would be very interested in someone coming on air to say "I was in difficulty and AIB have rescheduled my debt handy enough" .

Brendan
 
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