Negative Equity - living abroad

We have purchased a house in 2007 and are in negative equity of (im guessing) 70K. We havent been able to meet our repayments since January after my husband lost his job. Since then we had to move 'back home' (abroad, EU) due to an illness in the family.
We managed to rent out the house, but the rent is not covering the mortgage, and since there are some repairs due on the house, the tennant has stopped paying rent. We probably wont be ably to pay for the repairs, as we are barely managing as it is.

We would love to sell the house, but due to the negative equity are stuck with it and we dont know what to do...

What would happen to the remaining debt if we do sell it?
If we 'hand over the keys' and leave matter to the bank, wouldnt our remaining debt be even bigger?
Would we be able to get ourselves declared bankrupt in Ireland, and leave it at that?

It depends on what you have in the way of assets. If you attempt to keep your financial life in the EU country separate from that in Ireland, it will eventually catch up with you.

If you have no assets anywhere else, you could apply for bankruptcy in the EU country you are in.

Thats the thing, we have nothing now. But we obviously want to get our lives back and have to start from scratch.
I wouldnt want to start building a life again here if our debt in Ireland remains unsustainable and we would loose all that we build up here agian down the line.
My patner doesnt want to go for bankruptcy though and thinks we should keep making some payments towards the mortgage and sell the house when we are no longer in negative equity.
I am thinking this is the time to make the right choice, but Im not sure what the right choice would be???

If you have no assets and are not living in the house just go bankrupt,lots of people do it these days. Make a fresh start. Your credit rating will damaged for a long time, but that's probably a good thing. Have you looked into insolvency?

Bellop said:

My patner doesnt want to go for bankruptcy though and thinks we should keep making some payments towards the mortgage and sell the house when we are no longer in negative equity.

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So you can afford to subsidise the mortgage?

You can also try to solve the mess by talking to your bank. Ask them if they will let you sell, you will get a better price than the bank, and actually banks in generally don't want the hassle of selling and minding property. They just want their loans repaid. If you're lucky the shortfall will be written off by the bank. Only time will tell whether banks will go chasing people in other EU countries for low amounts. For example, in your case, if you're on a low wage, and have no assets then they will weigh up the cost of going to court in another EU country and may decide it's pointless.

@ Bronte
We cant affort the mortgage on the house now, as we are renting a place to live in. My husband want to use the rent we receive on the mortgaged house in Ireland to pay the mortgage, but it wouldnt cover the monthly repayments. We would need to top it up by 250,- a month to meet the repayments. Which we dont have. I suppose the bank probably would accept the lower payments, but we wouldnt be paying off the capita.
As we are on a tracker chances are the repayments will go up in the future....

@cormirl
We dont really care about the bad credit rating, as it will be in Ireland only - we currently have no intention of returning back to Ireland any time soon.
I am looking something on offer here where you dont really go bankrupt (no additional negative effect on your credit rating) but you do hand in all your earnings for 3 yrs and at the end of the 3yrs you receive a clean slate. Im not sure if they can force my Irish mortgage bank to accept the settlement though...