I'd really appreciate some advice on how to proceed with the EBS as they are now reneging on a offer they made us.
We have two properties with EBS, our own home and a buy to let property, both are in negative equity and we have arrears on both.
In September 2012 we emigrated to Perth as my husband wasn't working and we couldn't afford to live in Ireland and pay mortgages. We wrote to EBS (after many frustrating attempts to deal with our local branch) but didn't get any response. By pure luck a EBS case officer hand delivered a letter to our house in December 2013 when we were home for Christmas. We arranged to meet him and following his advice, submitted another Financial Statement and reduced our payments to token payments on our own home and none on the buy to let in order to encourage EBS to offer us a deal.
In March 2014, we were sent letters informing us that our home mortgage was deemed to be sustainable but the buy to let wasn't and we should contact EBS to discuss voluntary surrender etc.
We contacted the same case officer from Perth who agreed to look at the letters. In June 2014, he rang to say that EBS were offering us a deal of a full and final settlement for both properties in exchange for voluntary surrender of both and a lump sum payment of 30,000 Euro.
We were amazed and emailed back the following day to ask what timeline we had to accept the offer, as we would have to arrange for removal of personal items and inform our Tennant. We didn't get a response. We emailed again in July and September, with no response from our case officer.
In mid September we were emailed by another EBS officer asking us to contact them. We assumed that this was related to our previous discussions, but now it appears that it wasn't. As I had started working, we offered to fill in another Financial Statement and provided payslips.
We also offered to meet with the EBS at Christmas but they weren't interested. In February our new case officer rang us to tell us that it has been decided that we can afford to pay both mortgages and if we sell the properties we will be liable for the full balances (estimated at 200,000!).
She told us that we had let the previous offer lapse as we didn't surrender the properties, despite us not having received the offer in writing or any contact once the offer was made.
We've written to the Data Protection Officer in the EBS to ask for all of our information, but beyond that we're at a loss how to proceed.
Apologies for the long post but I'd really appreciate any advice.
We have two properties with EBS, our own home and a buy to let property, both are in negative equity and we have arrears on both.
In September 2012 we emigrated to Perth as my husband wasn't working and we couldn't afford to live in Ireland and pay mortgages. We wrote to EBS (after many frustrating attempts to deal with our local branch) but didn't get any response. By pure luck a EBS case officer hand delivered a letter to our house in December 2013 when we were home for Christmas. We arranged to meet him and following his advice, submitted another Financial Statement and reduced our payments to token payments on our own home and none on the buy to let in order to encourage EBS to offer us a deal.
In March 2014, we were sent letters informing us that our home mortgage was deemed to be sustainable but the buy to let wasn't and we should contact EBS to discuss voluntary surrender etc.
We contacted the same case officer from Perth who agreed to look at the letters. In June 2014, he rang to say that EBS were offering us a deal of a full and final settlement for both properties in exchange for voluntary surrender of both and a lump sum payment of 30,000 Euro.
We were amazed and emailed back the following day to ask what timeline we had to accept the offer, as we would have to arrange for removal of personal items and inform our Tennant. We didn't get a response. We emailed again in July and September, with no response from our case officer.
In mid September we were emailed by another EBS officer asking us to contact them. We assumed that this was related to our previous discussions, but now it appears that it wasn't. As I had started working, we offered to fill in another Financial Statement and provided payslips.
We also offered to meet with the EBS at Christmas but they weren't interested. In February our new case officer rang us to tell us that it has been decided that we can afford to pay both mortgages and if we sell the properties we will be liable for the full balances (estimated at 200,000!).
She told us that we had let the previous offer lapse as we didn't surrender the properties, despite us not having received the offer in writing or any contact once the offer was made.
We've written to the Data Protection Officer in the EBS to ask for all of our information, but beyond that we're at a loss how to proceed.
Apologies for the long post but I'd really appreciate any advice.