Over payments to mortgage held in credit account - is lender liable for fixing mortgage payments retrospectively

Aisling Geal

Registered User
Messages
4
Hi,
I would appreciate advise/thoughts. Thank you for your time.

Situation:

Home loan - On our family PPR - we are non-resident left Ireland purely for economic reasons to keep the home- plan is to return in near future when mortgage paid.

Lender: Currently owned and managed by Vulture fund - ( originally a Stepstone mortgage - passed through a number of entities.)

Amount outstanding: Approx 161,000 - #should be less - c 155000 if extra payments were paid off immediately see below

Value of home: 230000 estimate - (not valued recently but houses reaching higher prices lately in locality as not many available)

Interest rate: Variable rate - Euribor - 4.115% as at March 2020 - advised by previous account managers.
No current information on interest rate from them despite requesting statements but I think it has increased following recent phone conversation.

Monthly repayment - e 1170 - we overpay monthly and have managed to send lump sums of 5000 x 3 approx in last 6 months.

Amount in arrears: none now - # account in credit but have been informed that extra payments have not been allotted to pay down principle as requested each time we made a bank payment
but held in a credit account. Payments with previous loan owners were paid to the principle and we received statements.

I have made phone calls and emailed and requested monies to be paid off the principle.

Lender has finally written asking

1) if we want to reduce term or payments
2) the revised repayments once authorised will be in line with applicable variable rate
3) all other terms and conditions remain as per the original Mortgage agreement


Question
Is it not the case that the extra monies already sent should be applied to pay off the principle at the rate of interest on the day day it was paid in

Is that what is meant by 2) and am sceptical as this company seem to do their own thing and from reading on AAM are putting rates up.
By signing are we changing the original Mortgage agreement?
 
Hi Aisling

Your post is confusing.

Are you saying that you are in credit by €6,000?

If not, can you provide the following information

Mortgage balance:
Less amount in credit:
= Net amount due :

Most lenders knock any extra repayments off the mortgage balance.
So let's say you owe €100k and pay off €10k, they will reduce the balance to €90k and charge you interest on that.

Some lenders leave the mortgage balance at €100k and set up a credit balance of €10k , but they charge you interest on the €90k. So it makes no difference. Except that it does mean that if you get into difficulty in the future, you won't be going into arrears, they will just reduce the credit.

Do you have statements? If so, you can roughly calculate the interest charged. Check out


I suggest you write the following letter to the lender.

Dear

1) Please provide full statements to me for the period from 1 January 2018 to date. (Whatever date you started making overpayments)
2) What is the current mortgage rate
3) In a conversation with Mr X on 3/9/2020 he explained that the overpayments since xxxx have gone into a credit account.
4) Please explain how this credit account operates.
5) In particular, how is interest charged on my mortgage. Is the interest calculated on the mortgage account balance or on the mortgage account balance less the amount in the credit account.
6) Please illustrate 5) above with a recent example of the interest figure
 
Many thanks Brendan,
We are definitely in credit but as no statements received not sure of balance now.

I will follow up with queries as above -

Much appreciated.

AG
 
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