Reposession by Cambank

Has anyone been through this experience or is currently in the process of reposession ? I would be interested to know what the procedure is, how long it takes and what the outcome is. I understand Cambank are particularly aggressive when deealing with reposessions and would appreciate any comments.

I'm by no means an authority on the subject by my understanding is that if you default on your mortgage for more than three months, the bank is then entitled to repoesses it.

However, knowing someone who hasn't paid their mortgage for 18 months and is still living in the house, maybe they aren't so quick to actually reclaim the property.

I assume it's because they already have so many on their books and they certainly don't want any more.  I know CAM have a huge number of properties but every bank will follow through with a reposession in it's own way.

I still don't actually know anyone who has had their property reposessed after defaulting on their mortgage.

Sorry can't be any more specific!

Justin

 Thanks Justin. I have been reading all the ususal 'horror stories' about what happens on various legal blogs and thought it might be useful to hear from someone who has actually had experience of this.

Hello, I am actually going through this at the moment though have to say that CAM bank have been awful to deal with, to the point that they eventually stopped speaking with me saying that it had gone to their "legal department" and there was nothing that could be done!

We starting falling behind last year and despite asking the bank for help they said they could do nothing. We asked to go interest only, change the length of our mortgage, remortage, freeze charges ...all was denied point blank. They said that whilst we were in arrears they could do nothing.

Towards the end of last year we managed to make a few mortagage payments although by then our account was frozen so these payments were never credited to our mortgage debt. They eventually took these payments  towards their charges!

Their only advice to us was to borrow money from friends or family.

We even got a lawyer to try and help us but the only offer CAM gave us was for us to give them back the property but rent it from them for at least 7 years. This was not an option we wanted. We cannot afford to do this, we are currently out of work and have no other assets. We offered to get the property rented to a 3rd party so that the rent went to the bank but this was also rejected.

We have been told by the lawyer that it will go for repossession now because we turned down their "good offer". This we have been told can take up to 2 years. We were told that the bank will win regardless if we try and counterclaim and that the property will be repossessed for auction and if no one bids for it then the bank will take half of the valuation figure and go after us for the rest plus interest, costs etc. This I think is a little naughty as the bank originally overvalued the property to give us a mortgage and now they will only take half the valuation price if no one buys it. And with the way the market is we are probably in negative equity aswell.

We really do not know what to do now, our mortgage has now gone up to over 1500 euros a month, we are still being charged daily, the local branches of the bank will no longer deal with us and the lawyer now says there is nothing more he can do. We cannot afford the mortgage payments and according to the bank our arrears are now nearly 20k, although the mortagage deal we were put on is somewhat confusing and we actually have 13k sat in the account seemingly doing nothing but no one will explain anything to us.

We too would be interested to hear if any one else has dealt with CAM on this.

 A good dation in payment offer may help to put balance in the whole situation.

caroline86, unfortunately you are not the only one in this boat. I know a couple of people who have had the exact same problem and result, the only thing i can advise is to rent the property while you still own it and try and get as much money out of it as you can, at least this way when the property goes to auction if you still owe money it may help towards it.

Banks here are known not to want to help and it is a real shame as an interest only period or anything like that may have saved all this hastle and you would now be up to date and paying for your mortgage.

Joan

 Dation in payment notices put Banks into thinking of customer´s rights. And sometimes agreements are reached. And if not, you have a strong defence for a settlement of the debt if they finally decide to go to Courts.

I strongly advise them

 Joan, you are right about the banks not wanting to help. Cam refused our sugggestion of an interest only mortgage until things improve. I can not understand their thinking, they would have one less property to reposess if they offered this and we could keep our house and perhaps go back to paying the full mortgage when the job situation improves or we manage to sell the house. They only seem to think about the short term and not the long term solution.

Maria, thanks for your comments I will PM you.

Dacion en pago is ok for some, specially if it is a second home, for people living in Spain permanently and losing their main home becuase the banks will not help is an absolute disaster.

They have the ability to help but will not do so, i firmly believe they are specially interested in properties with positive equity (Properties which were originally valued at a good price before they went up) Example if a property was valued at 200.000 and has a 100.000 mortgage and is still worth 200.000 then they take it from you, wait and sell it when the prices go up making a lovely profit.

I have very close friends suffering this at the moment and its completely out of order, they have more than sufficient incomes to deal with a smaller mortgae and yet the bank does not care, the property is in large positive equity as it was bought 15 years ago before the boom and thats all they want.

Dacion en pago is their last option and will take it but by doing so they know the bank is going to make an enormous profit by selling it later! Instead if they had done an interest only and allowed my friends to sell the mortgage would have been paid off and the rightful owners of the property would have made a profit.

It is quite a large bank and i know for a fact that my friends are prepared to go to the papers, if you hear their story you would cry out of anger! They have tried so hard, worked so hard and all for nothing, to end up losing everything and having to rent from now on as people behind a desk in the bank want their hard earned cash.

Sometimes i wonder why we bother to do things correctly out here like pay taxes, declare rentals and so on, the minute we need help we get none.

I am lucky and dont find myself in any of these situations but feel the frustration for everyone else out there.

Joan

Why are Cambank being so aggressive?  They seem to have a lot of repos on their books, especially in the Valencia/Alicante area, which they are valuing very low compared to most of the other banks.  How does the aggressive foreclosures and then selling stuff at low values benefit Cambank?  Surely this hits their balance sheet?

 Its not only CAM being aggresive, most of them are.  A for why they want properties on their books like i said before, if the property has positive equity they can make a profit to cover the loss on properties in negative equity.

Joan

 Joan, so sorry to hear your friends' story. This just sounds typical of the banks. They don't see the story in human terms , all they think  about is the figures. I hope your friends do go to the papers, a bit of bad publicity for the bank can't do any harm. When will they realise that they are dealing with real people who are enduring a lot of heartache . 

Now that Cam are owned by Sabadell has their stance on reposession changed ? Would be interested to know if Cam are still acting as aggressively toward those in difficult circumstances.