People have posted on here before that their UK debts have been passed on to a US agency. Also that UK debt collectors have visited family members in the UK.

Yikes, that's quite a difference between your mortgage payments and potential rental income ...

The point I was making is that if UK mortgages are non-recourse - i.e. the mortgage holder can only go after the house and not other assets in the event of a default - then the debt collector scenario is moot:- there is no other debt that can legally be collected. I am suspecting, however, that UK mortgages are recourse, but if I was the OP I want to know for sure one way or the other.

If you rent it out for 6 months at 600 at least it pays half the mortgage.

The alternative is dropping the price. How much can you drop the price and still pay the mortgage company and legal fees etc?
It sucks not to make a profit but it is better than defaulting.

I don't know much about UK mortgage law, but it seems obvious that you have two basic choices:

-Rent it. In your case, this doesn't sound like a very good option. If the estate agents aren't excited about marketing your property, it could sit for quite a long time. You shouldn't just wait around to see what happens.

-Sell it. If you have no activity, then either your house is undesirable or else the price is too high. Look at it objectively and figure out why someone wouldn't buy it at the current price. If it needs paint and tidying up to get it sold, then do it. (A nice looking home will, all things being equal, sell more easily than one that is less so.)

If the price is too high, then drop it. Holding out for money that you aren't going to get doesn't make sense.

Taking it off the market briefly to polish things up may help. Stale listings tend to attract less attention. Removing it from the market for a month or so, after making some improvements, may be worth considering.

Unfortunately, you seem to have a prepayment penalty; if you sell, you need to address that. If you can sell the house with sufficient proceeds to pay off the mortgage, not including the penalty, then negotiate with the lender to waive the prepayment penalty.

Giantaxe's point is that you should find out whether you are liable for paying off the full mortgage balance in the event of a repossession or foreclosure, or whether taking the property away from you is sufficient in satisfying the loan. In the US, the former position is called "recourse" and the latter "non recourse"; under a recourse loan, the lender can seek what Americans call a "deficiency judgment" to recoup the lender for any shortfalls, while "non recourse" loans do not permit the lender to do anything more to you once the property has been taken. That's important information to have.

1st ask the mortgage company to gve you a payment holiday for 6 months .... then

sell it at a loss (do whatever price just to get rid) and get a long term bank loan (maybe 25 year one) to pay the difference in sale price to mortgage amount to mortgage company.

yes you're technically paying for nothing as they house is gone but you're not getting repo'd or bankrupted ..... and you never know when your circumstances may change and you might have to return to the UK and rely on your credit rating.

remember you wont be able to get so much as a store card if you're blacklisted.

sorry to hear about this - I was there years ago and its terrifying, luckily we pulled ourselves out but almost pushed me to the brink mentally with worry. Be proactive - dont wait for the worst to happen.

Thanks for all the support, I think I'm going to call the Mortgage Company and negociate that I get a payment holiday and am not liable for the 9K penalty. Assuming I get that, that gives me another 9K to play with when it sells.

I'll let you know what happens.

That seems like a good suggestion in this case. I gather from what I've read that mortgages in Britain are almost always recourse, i.e. taking the house away from you will not eliminate your obligation to repay whatever can't be recouped by selling it.

If you don't have enough funds to carry it through thick and thin, then should motivate you to sell it as soon as possible. Since you are stuck with the burden of repaying the full mortgage balance, regardless of what happens, you are probably better off selling in on your own terms than in holding out and hoping for the best.

Best of luck.

I think the penalty will apply if you change your mortgage and not on the sale of your house. That's how it used to be in the UK...but maybe it's all changed now. I remember we had a fixed rate mortgage with penalties...it didn't apply when we sold the house.

Fabulous advice! Please heed it.

Wow!

House price are falling monthly and you are may already be in negative equity.

(Sorry to offend some) throw the keys back at the mortgage lender and let them deal with it.

because the way I see it, you weren't really in a position to move.

I wasn't in a position to not move either. I didn't give up any work when I left the UK because I was recently made unemployed so our assumption was to make the best out of the payout that I had received from my redundancy (especially with an exchange rate of 2 for 1). A job came up in the US and they waited 4 months for my visa to be approved, which is rare in the US as you all will probably agree with. I found nothing in the UK during that waiting time.

I didn't leave and just dumped the house, I put the house on the market 3 months before I went and then left 12 months money in the UK to cover the mortgage until the house sells. For me I have just been a victim of circumstance, in that the bottom dropped out of the market at the exact time I bought the house and decided to move.

You could say I should of waited until the house sold but when would that of happed with the housing market as it is, do you see a US company waiting for that to happen, I don't, what work do I do in the UK while I wait for this house sale to happen?

Basically I took a gamble and many of us do in life (who want to get anywhere) and the gamble may still pay off. If it doesn't at least I have a job in a country that my wife and I always wanted to settle in.

If you paid mortgage indemnity premiums which I suspect you will have at 95% the any loss is covered by the policy.
As for debt collectors hassling family unless they are co signatries then a quick 4 cough will suffice.

We did pretty much the same thing. I don't have any advice but just wanted to send some sympathy.

We actually did manage to sell our house within the 12 months and all worked out, but I remember the stress when one sale fell through, and there were legal issues that were making me wonder if it would ever sell at all, and I was pretty sure the UK housing market was going to tank. I lost a lot of weight and didn't sleep much for quite a while there...