----< Best and worst mortgage lenders >---------------------------------
A new free email newsletter tells you know if the top five and worst five mortgage lenders have changed.

Based on the worst lender voting booth on the Home Repossession Page, it monitors the changing status of each lender and only sends you an update if a lender's position in the best and worst ranking changes.

As usual, we don't ask anything of subscribers except an email address to send it to. To sign up, go to:
http://www.home-repo.org/homebuyi/lender.htm

----< Nationwide joins Halifax with six-year shortfall limit >----------
Nationwide - the country's least popular lender, according to our continuous reader poll - has fallen in behind the Halifax and announced it will no longer pursue repossessees more than six years after their repossession.

As expected, we're hearing a different story from Abbey National, which has allegedly written to one reader to tell them that it will continue to chase shortfalls beyond six years.

Mortgage lender trade association the Council of Mortgage Lenders confirmed it is to confer with members to see if they should recommend following the Halifax's lead.

The CML press release on that is at:
http://www.cml.org.uk/press/1999/debtrec.htm

We'd love to hear from anyone with information about what other lenders are doing.

----< MPs call on authorities to stop favouring lenders >---------------
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) doesn't act against lenders because it is largely run by ex-lender executives. So implied the Sunday Times' Robert Winnett this week.

He says MPs want a "probe" into mortgage mis-selling after the FSA rejected the idea of an investigation after the FSA rejected the idea of an investigation.

This follows the FSA's pre-Christmas decision not to investigage claims of endowment mis-selling.

The BBC has a story on this at:
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid%5F573000/573366.stm

The BBC also reported that the Government is to crack down on lenders selling insurance tie-in. That story is at:
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid%5F568000/568851.stm

The online Sunday Times has the MP probe story in its Money section.
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/01/09/stimonnws01022.html?999

----< Repossession companies quietly fold >-----------------------------
Long-time readers will probably have read our investigation of the complex way in which directors of National Home Loans - now called Paragon - were able to receive large payments outside of their salaries and share dividends. The system involved using a company called Specialist Property Sales to look after repossessed homes until they were sold. We found that Specialist Property Sales paid a range of other companies for services - but some of those companies were owned by National Home Loans directors.

One of them filed for liquidation a couple of weeks ago, coincidentally at about the same time as debt counsellor DMS Scotland also filed.

The company was Fortavon, which was directed by a chap called J Mobey. Now, J Mobey also directed a company called "Moregaldes" (at least that was what it was called in Specialist Property Sales' accounts) but which we think was actually called Moreglades.

Moreglades has worried us for some time, partly because it was one of the NHL and SPS circle of director-enriching companies and partly because we know that a Moreglades UK was trading from a company service office in Maddox Street, London, earlier this year. It was reported to upset its customers.

The other company that filed was DMS Scotland, which appears to have been related to Debt Management Services in Wiltshire. Nothing suspicious there, except that there is a tenous link between DMS and Paragon in that they have used the same debt "counsellor" on the same repossession cases. We have long published our suspicions about the close links between debt counsellors and debt collectors and, indeed, about Paragon/National Home Loans' ability to make discrete payments to its own directors while receiving large amounts of bankruptcy rescue money from the Bank of England.

We receive occasional requests from readers who want to know if any action is going to be taken against NHL's directors. It's not a question we are in position to answer. However, for signs of how cozy the authorities actually are with the NHL/Paragon group of companies, remember the Times report a few weeks back on how the Bank of England now runs NHL's National Mortgage Bank.

The report went on to point out that NMB treats its customers less than well and went on to ask what the heck the country's financial authorities are doing treating mortgage borrowers the way NMB does? (Incidentally, the answer is: "trying to get rid of them so we can close the bank down," according to an executive quoted in the piece. A more accurate answer might be: "trying to squeeze as much cash as you can out of a bunch of people who cannot escape.")

But there are more signs that the Bank of England was cozy with NHL/Paragon until at least 1997. Have a look at this Bank of England web-page:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/mfsd/ci/970711/issues.htm
where you will find money was still being dished out to NHL/Paragon.

----< Changes to the Home Repossession Page web-site >------------------
Cheltenham & Gloucester/Lloyds TSB have finally joined our Lenders' Letters section. We have copies of a chain of shortfall correspondence where the C&G makes the interesting claim that it cannot be held responsible for its own mistakes. It's required reading.

[ends]

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