Tracker Mortgage on Apartment not fit to rent out

Hi

I am wondering if anyone can help me or shed any light on what we can do in our situation.

We have an apartment that we have had considerable issues with arising out of flooding water ingress issuess from an apartment above for5.5 years. We have a court case to get this resolved but it's going on so long now. We had to move out fully after that last time it flooded in the summer due to many issues and we have a surveyors report that confirms same.

We have recently bought a new house as we are expecting our first child soon and needed to upgrade but obviously couldn't live in our apartment anyway.

We were living with parents for months before moving into new property but we had to keep apartment as couldn't sell in it's current state. We have kept up mortgage, insurance and Mngt fee payments. We would be a me to rent out this apartment within 2 weeks and rent is going up all the time so this is so stressful.


So my questions are this, we need to approach the bank as we cannot afford to keep paying a mortgage on this property with no rental income when the baby arrives soon.

- How willing will the bank be to us switching to only payments until case gets resolved?
- will approaching them impact our tracker rate? (As it stipulates nowhere in the original BOI agreement anything about PPR or investment property rate switch).

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

We have recently bought a new house as we are expecting our first child soon and needed to upgrade but obviously couldn't live in our apartment anyway.

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I am missing something here.

You actually bought a new house recently and now you want the bank to do a deal with you on your apartment? Your priority should have been to pay the mortgage on the property you already owned.

Brendan

Hi Brendan,
I will try make this situation a little clearer.

The apartment is a 1 bed apartment bought by my spouse during the boom. We obviously cannot have a family in a 1 bed apartment would you agree?

So in an ideal world we would have sold the apartment and prepared to take a massive hit on it and move it to the new mortgage.

This was not possible not because we couldn't actually sell the property if it was in a normal state. From day one through no fault if our own and we have excercised every avenue possible trying to just get this situation resolved to no success (court case ongoing) it has had 5/6 major floodings through light fittings, smoke alarms etc etc so it's not habitable as it's not safe. Even if we won 20K to fix it up fully it would continue to leak as it has done until above us is fixed properly once and for all.

We could not bring up a family in the attic of our parents house and not should we have to as stated through no fault of our own we have had to endure a nightmare 5.5 years with this property that we just want fixed. We pay all of our debts and that will continue to be the case it's not a 'I don't want to pay my mortgage job'.

We have a child on the way and it's just going to become unsustainable to pay it and childcare without being able to rent it out.

My question was would the bank allow us to switch to interest only until we resolve the case (which we will win as we have never had any fault in it and have been shown complete disregard for our safety and sanity for years). Not will the bank just forgive my debt or anything of the sort.

We needed a safe place to live and we were lucky to be able to purchase the house in order to bring up a family safely in. And we will be paying the full debt on the apartment but the least we should be able to expect is to have a structurally sound apartment that isn't constantly flooded from outside of our four walls.

Hi Brendan and just to say the first line question is not meant to sound smart, I just read it back in case misinterpreted.

Thanks

scaryeire said:

We have recently bought a new house

we need to approach the bank as we cannot afford to keep paying a mortgage on this property with no rental income when the baby arrives soon.

- will approaching them impact our tracker rate? (As it stipulates nowhere in the original BOI agreement anything about PPR or investment property rate switch).

Click to expand...

I find your posts really hard to understand.

Why would you buy a second property if you cannot afford it and the first apartment? How much is your mortgage on both, and what is your income. How did you get a second mortgage if you couldn't afford both properties?

It is good that your contract does not state you will lose your tracker if you change it to an investment property.

I would just ask the bank for interest only and see what they say.

In relation to the court case, winning the case may be pointless, is the other owner a mark? (person of means). Can you afford your solicitor and barrister if he is not.

Why didn't you rent a house?

Hi scary

No problem with the first line. I didn't read it as smart in any way.

OK, the situation is now a bit different from what I understood in the first post. You said "We have an apartment". In actual fact, your wife has an apartment and not "we" as such.

Presumably you got the mortgage to buy the house based on your personal earnings and not on hers? Is the mortgage on your home a joint mortgage? Is it with the same lender?

The bank is not the cause of your problems. The bank is well within its rights, legally and morally, to pursue your wife fully for repayment of the mortgage. She should not have jointly purchased a second home if it was going to make the repayments on the first home difficult. The problems with the apartment and your family circumstances are not the fault of the lender. Your wife chose the apartment. You jointly chose to start a family. Your wife must sort out the issues with the apartment herself and must also pay her mortgage as a priority.

It's probably a bit late now, but it may have been worth entering into negotiations with the lender at the time to say that you would get involved in some way in return for a settlement of the mortgage.