Self Employed will be hit in Repossession surge

Having followed the recent press regarding the inevitable increase in home repossessions it is clear that those most at risk are the self employed.

This is based on analysis of our cases over the last 12 months, what this has identified is a sharp increase in self employed people suffering with mortgage arrears due to severely reduced incomes and spiralling costs. Moreover these people have normally and unfairly been placed with a “subprime” or “self certification” mortgages which are more expensive.

Most self employed people struggle as they are unable to re-mortgage and their existing lender won’t help them as they are unable to prove sufficient income. This compounds the problem by effectively “trapping” them in a bad deal with no flexibility whatsoever.

Furthermore many of these mortgages eventually get sold to or administered by a third party collections company who have no interest in providing customer service and are employed to simply collect the debt. The self employed are seen as easy targets to force unaffordable lump sums from – without any understanding of their income and expenditure.

Time and time again we see reprehensible behaviour by lenders that at best have no understanding of Repossession Law and worse flout the law deliberately and use the court process as a collection tactic, forcing hard working people into either unaffordable arrangements or finding a lump sum from family and friends.

The Self Employed are the back bone on this nation and many provide much needed employment to people throughout the UK. During this economic slump they are being worse hit, the combined effect of the rising cost of supplies, utilities and the sharp increase in fuel costs is a disaster. Add to that the increase in VAT and the more aggressive approach that the HMRC collection activity has seen since the new government it is no surprise that many of them are falling behind with their mortgages.

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