Cheltenham & Gloucester to cut redemption fees
Rumour has it that Cheltenham & Gloucester (which also means Lloyds TSB) will drop early redemption penalties on some, but not all, of its mortgage products.

MCRI re-hiring
We're hearing rumours that the Mortgage Code Register of Intermediaries has offered Monty Byrne his job back. Monty parted company with MCRI after he was revealed as the author of a Daily Mirror guide to mortgages, which included interesting details on how lenders make the most money out of customers.

The interesting implication of Monty being offered his job back is that if he refuses he won't be able to continue his Industrial Tribunal claim for unfair dismissal.

Specialist Property Sales
We're also hearing interesting stuff about this company. Remember, this is the company that features heavily in the Who Makes Money? section of the Home Repossession Page. At least one lawyer is concerned at the number of repossessions in the pipeline where the borrower bought their property from Specialist Property Sales. A wide range of lenders are repossessing in these cases, which makes me wonder if Specialist Property Sales sold houses with attractive deposit or advance deals to encourage people to buy when the housing market was much less buoyant. If anyone knows more about, or has had experience of SPS that might throw some light on this, please contact me at repossession @ bigfoot.com.

Abbey mutinies over early redemption penalties
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a Sunday Times story in which Abbey National threatened to spill the beans on how other lenders charge customers with lock-ins for discount mortgages and other special mortgage deals. I implied I was surprised by this because Abbey isn't noted for its graceful and generous treatment of its customers. I wondered if it wanted to look good in the light of growing public criticism of this country's mortgage industry.

Well, a couple of readers found Abbey's claims even more surprising. Here's what they said:

"I have just read your latest digest and am somewhat
surprised by Abbey National's holier than thou stance.
I recently was able to secure a new mortgage after about
7 years of renting and this was placed with HMC,
owned by none other than Abbey National and guess what:
redeem the mortgage within the first year and pay 3 months
interest. Redeem the mortgage within 2 years and pay 2
months. Redeem the mortgage within 3 years and pay 1
month."

This, he added, "was on one of their variable rate fresh
start mortgages without any financial incentives."

He got HMC to send written confirmation of the charges and said HMC's automated switchboard does offer to put callers through to Abbey National if they want.

Another reader also commented on the Abbey claim:

"I cancelled my endowment with the Abbey. Two things happened:

They accepted the cancellation, they sent me a
letter stating that the mortgage term had been extended to 24
years, 10 months - I queried it seeing as I am on a fixed
rate term and I have less time to run, they said they'd
made a mistake and a correction letter would be sent out.
I'm still waiting.

They also stated that my mortgage interest payments had
gone up, I phoned 'em to ask why as I am on a fixed rate
mortgage, they called me back to tell me that they had
made a mistake and the direct debit would be put back
to what it was.

Thank you to both readers for letting me know and particularly to the first for going to some time and trouble to double check and confirm what he suspected.

Southern Pacific
One of our readers wants to know if anyone has had problems with Southern Pacific Mortgage Ltd. If you have, they'd be grateful if you would drop me a line outlining what happened. I'm at repossession @ bigfoot.com.

Legal & General, er, playing with numbers?
The Sunday Times reports that Legal & General charges double the insurance premiums for customers who take out its insurance as part of a mortgage than it does if they take out the insurance separately. Legal & General disagrees. It says it only prints the details of its most expensive policy in its mortgage documents and expects financial advisers to research and tell mortgage customers about cheaper deals.

Lenders on this mailing list
Staff from several lenders have joined this mailing list with anonymous email addresses. I'm not against lenders reading these newsletters or, indeed, forwarding copies of them on to each other. Indeed I think it might help you get a better idea of what ordinary people consider to be proper behaviour towards your customer.

You are welcome to use your proper email addresses without risk of being excluded from future newsletters.

What do you think?
I've been thinking of adding a section to the site that lets people facing repossession offer their house for sale to the highest bidder. There are several reasons why I think this might be a good thing as well as a couple of reasons why it might not.

Good points:
Means you and I both get proof of offers people were prepared to make for the property, which might help one day help you to stop a lenders' claiming they did their best to market the property and get the best price for it as part of a shortfall claim. It would put the property in front of more people and hopefully raise the price you could get for it if you decided to sell. It would cut out estate agent's costs (which lenders usually double when they sell after repossession).

Bad points:
You might think I or buyers are exploiting your misfortune. Lenders might claim I am exploiting your misfortune (they're presumably no great lovers of the web-site). It might publicise your misfortune if I don't get the security/anonymity aspects right.

What do you think? Good idea or bad idea? I won't do anything about this until I know that it's OK with readers. The site is here to help you and is created primarily by you telling me what has happened to you, while all I do is edit it. If you have a strong view about the idea either way, let me know.

[ends]

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