i have two houses one that i got a mortgage on back in 1990, i moved away becouse i did not like the area that the house was in. over the past 8 years i have paid the mortgage and sometime had a tent in the house,but over the past year the area had gone down hill and the letting agent has not found a tent in over a year now. i paid 32,000 for the house back in 1990

My questions are

1. i could sell the house for about £20,000 but i will still owe 12,000 on the morgage 2. do i just had the keys back in to A&L and call it a day 3. i have an endownment on the house do i keep that or does the mortgage company take it.

need advice can't carry on paying this anymore

-- Mark (advice_needed31@hotmail.com), February 24, 2001

Answers

Hi Mark,

I'm no expert, but in my opinion you need to establish where you stand financially here, and to do this you need to assemble some basic information. If you paid £32,000, then even with a 95% mortgage, you will have taken out an actual mortgage of just over £30,000. And you say you have been paying the mortgage since 1990. So that's ten or eleven years of contributions to your endowment policy. So, sorry if this is a dumb question, but won't that policy, which you own, be worth something? You need to find out. Could it be worth enough to allow you to sell your house? The lender (or an IFA) certainly ought to be able to give you proper advice about this.

What I don't understand is if (and how) you have two mortgages. (You say 'I have two houses'.) You need proper advice on the implications of this. You could consider starting with the CAB, which is free, if you can't afford legal advice.

If you think were missold an endowment mortgage, I've read that an Essex-based solicitor, Joseph Aaron, is leading a 'class action' type campaign to claim compensation.

-- Eleanor Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com), February 25, 2001.