Moved Abroad - 1 Year On

Hello All,

I posted a year and a half ago here:
http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=176941&highlight=steve119

We left Ireland a year ago and as you can read in the thread we were unable to resolve our negative equity, despite offering every scenario we could afford.

Now a year later, after a load of foot dragging from the bank and email only communication they sent us a letter to say they would consider appointing a receiver if they didn't hear from us in 10 days.

We did not provide our address in the U.S yet they still somehow found us. (One of us is US citizen, one Irish but US resident)

Our financial situation has improved as a result of being abroad although nothing significant (no real savings still). We did buy a house abroad although it was a very small deposit due to our finances upon leaving Ireland.

There is now NO way we will be returning to Ireland except for an occasional visit maybe once a year.

So I have the following questions as I only see older threads on the subject:

1.) What is the likely impact on our life here now that they have our relocated address?

2.) Will they make any effort to lodge any claim in the U.S.?

I'm still open to cutting a deal although with all they have put us through and the charges racking up, I can't see how we could pay them in full anymore even if over 30 years! We have more disposable income than when we lived in Ireland (which was a negative amount ) but still very little.

Property prices where we owned are still falling even with the upturn elsewhere so the house we paid 290K for is probably around 100-130,000 at this point (Was 450K at the peak if i remember right).

Our negative equity is probably around 100K at this point (if they could actually sell it), 14K arrears and they have stated the receiver STARTS at 3,500.

2.) Will they make any effort to lodge any claim in the U.S.?

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Unlikely.

Yes agree with Time. Highly unlikely that they would choose this action as they would first of all need an Irish Judgement and costs would just not warrant any action. Offer to assist in the re-posession of the property if they will accept this in full settlement of the debt. Advise them that you are not returning to ireland and your current financial position in the US is not strong enough to contribute any payments to your Irish debt.

44brendan said:

Yes agree with Time. Highly unlikely that they would choose this action as they would first of all need an Irish Judgement and costs would just not warrant any action. Offer to assist in the re-posession of the property if they will accept this in full settlement of the debt. Advise them that you are not returning to ireland and your current financial position in the US is not strong enough to contribute any payments to your Irish debt.

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We offered to do this but pay the shortfall on our current terms (tracker rate) and they refused so there is no question they would not write a penny off.

Thanks

Thats a rubbish response from the Bank and illustrates the lack of any decision making capability within many banks. No need for you to worry. The cost of taking legal action against you would be prohibitive and ultimately useless, given your location and intentions. Move on with your life and let the Bank deal with the situation. You have offered to co-operate in the re-posession of the property and the ball is now in their court.

Just a further point to avoid the "debt must be honoured cohort" who tend to take a high moral stance on these issues. I am a long standing bank employee and have a pragmatic viewpoint on debt recovery. I.e. my expectation from a bankers perspecvtive is that a client will co-operative to the best of his/her/their ability in dealing with a debt. However, Banks like any other commercial institution must accept that bad debts are a fact of life and people need closure to a debt situation. Provide a reasonable level of co-operation is given to either hand back the property and/or pay a reasonable amount of funds over a 3/5 year term, the Bank needs to provide in return a guaranteed closure date for the client and write-off the balance of the loan (as per the purpose of the insolvency legislation). Some banks are doing this (as per recent publicity) but others are continuing to hold a bolshie (we will write off nothing approach) which neither helps the banks nor their clients.

44Brendan;
Am with you ; Hopefully this Bank will be an outlier as I now have the feeling that some of your good to see pragmatism is rubbing off on your superiors.