Incorrectly lost my BTL Tracker. But sold BTL. Appeal rejected.

The lenders were much slower and much less generous in restructuring buy to lets than family homes, so it is no surprise that 216 BTLs wrongly lost ownership.

In fact, I would say that there were more who were never in any financial difficulty at all with their buy to let, but the very high SVRs made them unprofitable so they sold them with no intervention from the bank at all.

So the 216 figure is probably an understatement.

Brendan

Brendan. I lost a BTL because it was unprofitable and without intervention from the bank. However the banks stance on this is that this is purely a “commercial decision” by the borrower and has nothing to do with the interest rate overcharge. I don’t know the detail of the 216 but if there are others like me then that 216 is going to be higher. Any idea how the CBI defines that 216? Is it 216 that the banks have declared or is it 216 that are claiming to have lost their BTL?

For my BTL I was over paying by 700 a month. Never missed a cent or was ever late with a payment. A family member lent me €300 per month for 5 years. When they retired I had to sell as I could not afford the repayments. I didn’t want to sell but I had to. This would be classified as a voluntary sale. Bank and appeals panel said the rate had no impact on my choice to sell and it was my commercial decision.

I am sure there are 100s of BTL owners who didn’t play system and just sold as their investments we’re loss making or impacting their personal finances. Following the central bank review and appeals process these people got nothing yet people who didn’t bother to pay ended up with huge compensation in some instances.

Hopefully the ombudsman sides with those who sold when any reasonable person can see if they were on the correct rate they would not have sold.

Fakenews said:

the banks stance on this is that this is purely a “commercial decision” by the borrower and has nothing to do with the interest rate overcharge. I

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Sorry Fake

I don't know how many but I have seen other cases.

If you have a property which has a rental income of €10,000 a year and €15,000 interest, you probably should sell it.

If you have a property which has a rental income of €10,000 a year, and €5,000 interest, you should probably keep it.

The commercial decision is based on the commercial aspects of the deal. And the principal one is the cost.

Where are you with it? Have you appealed?

Brendan

Dpdp01050842 said:

Following the central bank review and appeals process these people got nothing

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Hi Dpd

Presumably you got a refund of the overcharge for the years while you owned the property?

Or did you actually get nothing.

I think you guys should get together and pool resources on this one.

Brendan

I should be clearer. The standard redress and and compensation ((EBS). Deemed impacted. So overpaid interest was refunded yes.

But in terms of loss of property (or sale of property that was driven by the rate) nothing. Mine is currently with the ombudsman “drafting preliminary findings” and I’m expecting to receive this in the “coming months”. It’s been with them since mid 2017.

Fakenews said:

However the banks stance on this is that this is purely a “commercial decision” by the borrower and has nothing to do with the interest rate overcharge.

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Hi Fake

Where does this stand now?

Have you appealed it to the Independent Appeals Panel?

Brendan

Brendan Burgess said:

Hi Fake

Where does this stand now?

Have you appealed it to the Independent Appeals Panel?

Brendan

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Hi Brendan. I have appealed and am currently awaiting a decision on whether I will get an oral hearing. As well as saying that this was a commercial decision they also argue that rental income did not cover the capital portion of my monthly repayment. My view on this is that capital is not a component of profitability and that the capital portion is akin to contributions to a pension.
I agree with your assessment above. If I have 15k interest and 10k income then I make a loss. Pretty simple from my point of view so I don’t understand why the bank would even make that argument. However, they have made an argument which means that they are not willing to clean up this mess without being forced to. I’ll update this thread whenever I hear back.

Fakenews said:

they also argue that rental income did not cover the capital portion of my monthly repayment.

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That is a stupid argument ok.

If you were meeting the full repayment, it doesn't matter to them if it was coming from the rent or from your granny.

Brendan

I could be wrong but I think fake is saying he couldn't cover the full repayment
He could cover the interest

What was the term?
Was the bank prepared to extend the term?

moneymakeover said:

I could be wrong but I think fake is saying he couldn't cover the full repayment
He could cover the interest

What was the term?
Was the bank prepared to extend the term?

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Nope. I was able to cover all repayments. When the interest charged exceeded rental income we put the property up for sale. Once we had an offer we carried out additional return on investment calculations and also spoke to our local bank manager. No joy from the bank manager and as the property was not profitable we sold. Never missed any payments and never borrowed from anyone to cover the repayments.

Dpdp01050842 said:

I should be clearer. The standard redress and and compensation ((EBS). Deemed impacted. So overpaid interest was refunded yes.

But in terms of loss of property (or sale of property that was driven by the rate) nothing. Mine is currently with the ombudsman “drafting preliminary findings” and I’m expecting to receive this in the “coming months”. It’s been with them since mid 2017.

Click to expand...

Hi Dpdp,
Did your case ever get resolved with the Ombudsman?
Given that the central bank initial review is over the Ombudsman should be processing the backlog now.
Hope you were successful?

Nothing no. Any progress on your side? From reading your comments we are in exactly the same boat. Although my post tax rent would have covered both interest and principal and left a small profit. My commercial decision to sell at a loss of 80k would have been insanity. I’ve been told the status of my case has been “drafting preliminary decision” since March 2019. It is beyond frustrating. Below is my timeline I posted in another thread:

April 2017: Appeal rejection
December 2017: Ombudsman receives complaint
Feb 2018: Ombudsman asks for the letter of confirmation the appeals process ending to be sent. I lost this and was having trouble getting AIB to resend.
May 2018: Eventually get the form and send to Ombudsman
June 2018: Mediation offered and rejected by AIB
July 4th: Investigation opens
September 7th: Summary of complaint sent to AIB. Info request included.
October 2018 AIB Respond with comments and info request.
October I respond to AIB comments with: No further comments and AIB comments to not address the facts. The bank overcharged me significantly over a number of years which made our investment loss making when it should have been comfortable to make Payments. From the banks overcharging (which it admits) they have been fully repaid yet I no longer have the apartment and absorbed massive losses as I had to sell. I have not been returned to the position I would have been had this overcharge not been made. My investment property was turned into something that needed assistance from a family member and it had to be sold when that person retired.
November 2018: Both sides say no more comments
December 2018: AIB send a random email to the Ombudsman saying there was an error on their calculation and they revised them with calculations included. Email made no sense as the numbers and calculations had not changed.
December 2018 I said I had no comments.
March 2019: Ombudsman asks AIB to send all their correspondence with me during the appeals process. This was the same information AIB were requested to send (and did send) back in September 2018.
April 2019 AIB send all the exact same info they sent back in October 2018.

Nothing since, 10 months.

Sorry to hear that it’s still dragging on. What was the exact reason that the independent appeals panel rejected your appeal?
I’m still waiting to hear from them. My appeal was submitted about 15 months ago. Lots of back and forth until April and have been waiting since then. Radio silence.
Have you chased the ombudsman? I took a look on the ombudsman website and the last decision recorded there is 2018. Doesn’t look like there have been any decisions made in 2019 or else they are not being transparent by allowing people to view previous decisions.

The decision was that they did not agree that my decision to sell was impacted by the overcharging and agreed with the bank that it was a commercial decision to sell. They did not expand any further than that.

I’ve chased the ombudsman and keep getting told I will have a preliminary decision in the coming months.

My understanding is that the 2019 tracker related decisions will be published at some stage this month with quarterly or half yearly updates thereafter. From what I’ve read there was 15 legally binding decisions made as of mid November so I expect we will have 20+ decisions published in January. From his November comments he expects “a considerable number” in the coming weeks.

Our appeal process began over three years ago and we have just heard that our appeal was rejected by EBS/AIB’s “Independent Panel”
This was a BTL. We contractually had a tracker mortgage but the bank unilaterally changed the rate basis to be a variable commercial rate without our knowledge ( Breach of Contract).
The Variable Commercial Rate applied was discounted for a period. Once the discount period was over the interest payments jumped.
But for the overcharge we would have been making an additional €500 per month.
Once the interest rate increased we began to experience a deficit of rental income versus interest expense.
As the BTL was no longer profitable we obtained an offer to sell the house and approached the bank seeking assistance as we wanted to keep the BTL. We have emails of the interactions with the EBS. The bank provided the interest rate but not the basis for the interest rate ( we did request it ). We used this interest rate in ROI calculation spreadsheets along with the offer price for the sale and created multiple keep/sell scenarios. The spreadsheets we emailed to ourselves so they are time stamped to when we were making the keep/sell decision. We also have emails between myself and my wife referencing the interest rates and discussing how we wanted to hold onto the BTL.
We had to borrow from family in order to fund the shortfall between the sale price and the mortgage so this was not an easy decision for us.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, the bank said that the interest rate charged had no bearing on our decision to sell and that this was a commercial decision.
The “Independent Panel” did not allow us to have an oral hearing and gave no reason for rejecting our appeal other than to say that we had not established that the interest rate was the cause of the sale.
In our case we have documents showing the interest rate at the heart of everything and We show that we engaged with the bank prior to selling.

I have heard that this Panel have stopped holding Oral Hearings and that the vast majority of cases are being rejected.
The Panel does not provide any feedback other than to say that the customer has not established enough proof that the interest rate overcharge is the cause.
We believe that our case is strong but was rejected out of hand. They are calling us liars in the face of documentary evidence.
I have to say that I have no confidence that the panel is either acting independently, or is actually examining the case files.
The process from my point of view has been a sham. This hasn’t been a “free go”.
It has been an exercise by the banks in putting on a show and the Central Bank have enabled them.

We will be continuing with the FSPO or the High Court but I wanted to post this for people who are waiting for a decision.
Don’t get your hopes up / lower your expectations in this sham process. But don’t give up. You still have options open to you.

Hi Fakenews

That is disappointing. It's a bit like the prevailing rate issue. They issued the same response to a lot of people irrespective of the argument.

It was a free shot. It took a lot of time, but I presume that with the exchange of submissions and responses you know AIB's arguments well by now.

The Ombudsman process is very slow. I recommend that you draft a submission anticipating all the arguments that AIB will make in response. That way, when you get a response from AIB, you will not need to make any further submission to the Ombudsman and it can go straight to adjudication.

You should also get in touch with Dpd. This is a systemic issue and well worth getting as many people affected by it together. You can compare arguments and responses from AIB. And if you need to go to the High Court, you can share the costs.

Brendan

Hi Brendan. That’s the thing. There is no argument from AIB. They just say that this was a “commercial decision which was not influenced by the interest rate”. And then the panel laps it up. DPD got the same argument from the bank.

In my opinion the appeals panel is somewhat of a waste of time but it does allow you to practice your argument and tailor your FSPO case based on AIBs response. The process is long and arduous and don’t expect much change out of 2 years. It is what it is and moaning (which I have done to be fair) won’t get us anywhere. I am however of the opinion that the representatives from law firms in particular are conflicted given their work with various parts of the bank past present and, hopefully for them, future.

I think anyone who has this particular type case should wait until at least one decision comes through before drafting your appeal to the FSPO. My preliminary decision is due (based on guidance from the FSPO case manager for me) in the next 2 months. I fully expect this timeline will be kicked out again but surely there will be one decision on a sold BTL being published in the next 11 months.Then you can either follow or learn dependent on the outcome.

And that is why you should get together.

If someone put in a good submission and gets his complaint upheld, you can copy it.

If the complaint is rejected by the Ombudsman, you should look at the reasons e.g. maybe the original complaint was put together badly.

Brendan