Mortgage Payment Difficulty – Arrears

If you are having trouble repaying your mortgage (mortgage payment difficulty and arrears) and are worried about arrears, there is government help available. However, it is important to make sure you keep your mortgage provider up to date with any difficulty you may be experiencing.

Here are a few ideas that might help

Contact your mortgage lender as a priority and explain your position. Most banks and building societies will try to help and may offer you temporary payment arrangements such as extending the repayment term of your mortgage, or temporarily moving you to interest-only repayments.

Think back to when you took your mortgage out. Check to see if you have any insurance cover such as Accident and Sickness Protection or Unemployment Benefit. Double check your paperwork, check with the bank or building society who your mortgage is with, or ask the adviser who helped arrange your mortgage.

It is hard, but now might be the time to think about cutting back. Review your regular payments, check your direct debits, and decide what might be essential at present, cut back on non-essential things if necessary. Look at your daily expenditure, are there things you buy everyday that are of lower priority? How about your energy bills, can you review these, perhaps you may get better terms?

You could consider speaking with a debt counselling service, there are quite a few around. Maybe someone like Citizens Advice, of even a charity such as Shelter.

Why not think about government help. There is help at hand GOV.UK.

Above all here are some things that we think you should avoid doing if you have mortgage payment difficulty or arrears.

Do not take out more loans, such as payday loans. These are very costly and may put you at further risk. Some people suggest you can hand back the house keys, that is not a solution long term, you still must pay your mortgage and if your home sells for less than you owe the debt is not just written off.

Find out more about Support for Mortgage Interest on GOV.UK.