[ Post New Message | Post Reply to this One | Send Private Email to Eleanor Scott | Help ]

Response to Why do I keep reading about agreed settlements on this site.

from Eleanor Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com)
I understand that there are many people who have negotiated vastly reduced settlement figures (but like Pendle indicates, the original claims are so ridiculously high that anything seems 'reduced'!), and their success stories are on this site and/or linked to this site. But they didn't do it overnight. A lot of it seems to depend on the lender you're dealing with.

Personally, I think that settlements just encourage the lenders to carry on doing what they're doing.

In my opinion many people agree to pay settlements on unsubstantiated shortfall 'debts' because they just want the whole thing over and done with. This puts them automatically in a weaker negotiating position.

More often than not they have to borrow money to make a settlement.

*If* you are prepared to live with the situation for a while longer, you can probably come out of it a lot better off. OK, it's not fair, and you must want your life back, but the bottom line is that if offer up X amount of money then the likelihood is that they'll say, No we want X + Y. That's basic negotiating tactics. They don't care. They're not losing any sleep over it. It's not personal to them; and they think they have all the time in the world.

But they don't have all the time in the world.

For example, if you can demonstrate that the lender messed you about for months, even years, over the production of evidence of its claim (deed, MIG, valuations, receipts, etc) then that lender will effectively have stuffed its own case against you (see this site under Repossession - why lenders refuse to supply documents) under the new-ish Civil Procedure Rules.

And if, for example, you can demonstrate that the property was undervalued, or undersold, or poorly marketed, simply because it was known to be a repossessed property, then Skipton v Stott 2000 CA will apply, and the lender runs the very real risk of having its whole claim being thrown out of court, because of this legal precedent.

Good luck. I hope you get what you want, and I hope that you do indeed get your life back one way or the other.

(posted 8478 days ago)

[ Previous | Next ]