SIXTEEN PROPERTIES were repossessed at the High Court yesterday including a home owned by a man who told the court he needed as much money as possible to leave to his adult son who has a rare medical condition.
In a separate case, the court heard how a borrower thought he could clear the debt on his family home with a job offer in Africa that turned out to be an internet scam.
Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne was unable to complete the list before her and had to adjourn almost half the cases after running out of time.
In a case involving Start Mortgages Ltd, counsel for the lender said the borrower had remortgaged his home in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, for €100,000. The house was surrounded by agricultural land not included in the mortgage. He now owed arrears of €20,000 and had told the lender he had no means to pay his mortgage, but could offer a €5,000 grant due in 2012.
The 61-year-old told the court he was on farm assistance of €147 a week. He believed he would get nothing for the house if he sold it, but if he put it with land he might find a buyer. The land was worth over €1 million when times were good, he said. “I’d sell it tomorrow if I had a customer,” he said.
He told the judge he lived alone. He had a 29-year-old son “who had the mind of a nine-year-old” because he had Reye’s Syndrome.
“What I want to do is get all I can to leave to him,” he said.
Ms Justice Dunne granted the order with a stay on its execution for 12 months to give the man time to find a buyer.
In a second case involving Start Mortgages, the court heard a couple with two young children had fallen behind with their €176,000 mortgage and now had arrears of €21,926. Counsel for the lender said the husband had said he was out of work but had arranged employment in Africa that would give him €650,000 up front to clear the mortgage.
“But in fact it had all the hallmarks of an internet scam,” counsel said.
The borrower had provided copies of e-mails which when examined showed mistakes, he said. These included one which mentioned “The Royal Bank in Scotland” instead of “of Scotland”. “Obviously the expected windfall did not come about,” counsel said.
Ms Justice Dunne agreed it probably was a scam and said the defendant had been the victim and not the perpetrator. She granted the order with a stay of six months.
Start Mortgages was granted five orders for possession yesterday; Bank of Ireland got three; AIB and ACC banks, two each; and Bank of Scotland, GE Capital Woodchester Homeloans Ltd, BCS Offshore Funding Ltd and KBC Mortgage Bank, one each.
INTEREST RATE CHALLENGE: PUB OWNER CHARGED 20%
A MORTGAGE interest rate of almost 20 per cent charged to a Co Clare woman who borrowed €125,000 was “unconscionable”, her barrister told the High Court yesterday. The woman is challenging the level of interest being charged by the lender.
The court heard the woman had mortgaged her rural Co Clare pub in 2008, which was also her home, to pay off debts and to pay her former husband as part of a separation agreement.
Secured Property Loans Ltd provided the finance and charged her an annual percentage rate of 19.4 per cent. The woman had received legal advice at the time of taking out the loan, the court heard.
Her barrister, Brian Sugrue, told Ms Justice Mary Laffoy that his client had only ever intended the loan to be a bridging facility until she could arrange new finance with a much lower interest rate.
The rate was “unconscionable”, he said.
Counsel for the lender, Alastair Rutherdale, said there was no evidence, historically, of the courts intervening to set aside loans where interest rates as high as 60 per cent were charged.
Until the 1980s, when dedicated consumer credit laws were introduced, the rate of interest charged by moneylenders was 39 per cent, almost twice as much charged by the lender, he said. He said the woman had not objected at the time the loan was taken out.
Ms Justice Laffoy reserved her judgment and said she would deliver it next week.
