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“YOU GET AN awful fright when you get a letter to say your mortgage has been bought by a vulture fund.”
This customer of a well-known commercial bank operating in Ireland was told by letter in 2015 that their loans had been sold.
The term ‘vulture fund’ became politically toxic last year. Their impact on Ireland is even making headlines internationally.
The New York Times, highlighted the case of Tyrellstown, a development which had its loans bought by the giant investment bank Goldman Sachs in 2014.
Tenants of the west Dublin estate faced eviction after they received letters from a vulture fund telling them they would have to vacate their homes once their leases ran out.
Experts estimate about 50,000 mortgage holders are with vulture funds – about 15% of the market.
First of all, what is a vulture fund?
A vulture fund is an investment firm that often buys up property portfolios from banks.
They buy on the cheap and are looking to make a quick return. As reported in The Sunday Business Post this weekend, these firms are paying little or no tax.
During the recession, these firms bought both residential and commercial portfolios from the troubled banks. Included in these portfolios were thousands of mortgage holders who bought in the boom – every day people who found themselves mixed up in the financial crisis.
‘They said they could no longer deal with us’
“One day, out of the blue, we got a letter from the bank to say that our loans had been sold to a vulture fund and that they could no longer deal with us. That’s how it happened,” said one person whose mortgage loans had been sold to a vulture fund in 2015.
It was a surprise to the couple. Owners of a small business, the couple have mortgages on a family home, a premises used for their business and an apartment – bought more than 15 years ago – which they rent out.
During the recession they fought hard to keep their staff of five to 10 in employment, paying PAYE, VAT etc, and have taken little or no salary over a 10-year period.
The couple were not in arrears with any of their mortgages; paid capital and interest on their family home, but did resort to paying interest-only for a number of years on the other properties, as per the terms of an agreement made with the bank.
Before the sale of their loans, they had tried to make contact with the bank to come to some sort of solution – a pathway to pay off the mortgages or sell the properties to repay the debt.
“When the crash happened, we acted immediately and contacted our bank to tell them we would struggle to continue paying the capital. This was at the same time Finance Minister Michael Noonan came out and said there were two types of people – those that can’t pay and those that won’t pay.
We said we wouldn’t be the won’t pay and would meet all commitments laid out in our loan agreements. We were never in arrears. Noonan also said vulture funds would only deal with those in arrears.
“In order to meet the payments and ensure we didn’t enter into arrears, we used all our savings. We got rid of VHI health insurance, we cut way back, no additional day-to-day stuff, a very tight budget.”
“We wrote to the bank saying we could pay X, Y, Z and the bank did not even respond to our proposal. We kept trying to make an appointment – we rang, we wrote letters – but no response,” said the person who is now dealing with a vulture fund.
“In the back of my mind now, I think they always had a plan to sell our loans to the vulture fund, that’s why there was a lack of response. There was no acknowledgement of our proposal.”
Banks lack of response
In all, it took over 18 months for the couple to get a response from the bank on their proposal and by that time, due to the fall in property prices, it was too late for any sale to make a decent return.
They only responded to our proposal after we called and demanded they come back to us.
“They turned the proposal down. They gave no reason.”
After the back and forth with the bank, the letter landed in the hallway to say that their loans had been sold to a vulture fund.
With all properties now in negative equity, no sale all of properties would pay down the mortgages in full (meaning, even if all properties were sold tomorrow, the couple would have no family home, no where to live, no business premises and a substantial debt still hanging over their head, which they would still be liable for). The vulture fund called in the full amount on the loans, including interest.
“We called the bank and they said they couldn’t deal with us anymore and to call this other firm.”
Asking for Minister Michael Noonan’s help
The couple then wrote to Noonan in late 2015 asking for assistance, and enquiring if what was done to them was the correct way to treat people.
“You hear all the time that the loans being sold are in distress – but we were paying. Our family home was not in arrears at all and was due to be cleared.”
The minister replied to tell the couple that borrowers’ loans that are sold to vulture funds are now covered under the Consumer Protection Act 2015, stating that their rights remain the same as they were prior to the sale.
The letter stated the minister was “unable to intervene directly between a lender and borrower” and advised the couple to seek professional advice.
“That was all we got from him,” said the homeowner.
The issue I have with the bank is they pushed it out as long as they could, they wouldn’t deal with us and then they sold the loans for a discounted rate even though a proposal was on the table.
To date, the bank will not tell the customers how much they sold the loans to the vulture fund for.
(Above: A section of a letter, seen by TheJournal.ie, sent by the couple to the bank in 2015)
I nearly feel like we shouldn’t have paid, we paid thousands of euros in interest to the bank, only to have our loans sold on. There were people who saw what was coming, knew that they were going to lose their home once sold on to a vulture fund and just stopped paying.
All they want is to see how many zeros they can add, all at the expense of a family.
The family home is meant to be protected under the law – but it is the one thing vulture funds know has the most equity in it, so they put as much pressure on you as they can to sell your family home. That family then has to find some where else to live.
They don’t make phone calls, they don’t do emails, they just keep sending threatening letters in the post.
(Above: A selection of a letter sent by the couple to their bank in 2015)
I’d say there are hundreds, if not thousands of us out there. We’re not the only ones.
Now dealing with the vulture fund, they have to give over a full account of their monthly spending – from food and clothes to bills and specify how much is left at the end of the month.
“You feel a bit more uncertain about being in the hands of a vulture fund, as they have never been in Ireland before up until recently.
It still takes forever for them to get back to us and no one seems to talk to each other. We continue to get letters to say we are in arrears and then we call to say we are not and to check their accounts and they say it is an error. It all causes undue stress. I don’t know if we will lose our house. I just don’t know.
The couple believe all that is needed for people in similar positions is a bit of space to get themselves out of it.
“I feel very aggrieved as a citizen. The citizen is powerless.”
Do the banks know what became of the mortgage holders they sold to vulture funds?
The banks aren’t sure. Once sold on, they don’t follow them.
AAA-PBP Paul Murphy grilled Permanent TSB boss Jeremy Masding before the Oireachtas Finance Committee in November on the sale of loans of €481 million to a number of vulture funds. At the time, market sources believed the sell came with a steep discount on the face value of the loans.
Masding said the sale was of its “non-core” loans, adding that the bank was “obliged” to sell them.
When asked by Murphy if residential mortgages were included in the sale, Masding conceded that some were commercial loans that were linked to residential home loans.
Murphy asked the bankers if they knew what had happened to the property owners who had their mortgages sold on to the vulture funds.
He was told that once a sale goes through the bank isn’t involved in any further transactions between the two parties.
PTSB was not the only bank to sell its portfolios to vulture funds.
Ulster Bank sold off 900 family homes as part of a sale of a €2.5 billion property loan portfolio.
The bank claimed the mortgage holders were on the brink of having their homes repossessed and were already in the court process. There were calls for emergency legislation to be introduced to halt the sale.
Some of the bank’s customers have also taken issue with being included in the sale.
When mortgages are sold to vulture funds, they are done so in a large pot with other customer loans. The mortgages are often sold in bulk for a reduced price.
Why does the bank not deal with each individual customer or go back and offer their loans for the same reduced rate they are being offered to the vulture fund?
Financial experts say it comes down to timing – namely it would take too long to deal with them on a case-by-case basis. “It would take forever,” said one person working within the sector.
However, the issue has now reached breaking point. With the spiralling homelessness crisis, the government is looking at ways to keep people in their homes.
Recently it was announced that New Beginning – the debt agency founded by barrister Ross Maguire – plans to buy thousands of homes with mortgages owned by Pepper, a firm that services loans for Irish banks and vulture funds.
The sale is scheduled to go through this year, and is something that is envisaged to be the first of many such transactions.
The idea behind it is that properties of mortgage holders in distress will be bought and the tenant will be allowed rent the home, with an option to buy when their circumstances improve.
Other such deals are in the pipeline, whereby homes could be bought and used as social housing and rented out to the once-owner of the property.
Stopping the swell of homelessness
It’s a last-ditch effort from the government to stop the ever-increasing number of people finding themselves homeless.
Last year, such a move was recommended by the master of the High Court who suggested the government should buy back homes from vulture funds using compulsory purchase orders.
Edmund Honohan said legislation could be introduced to allow the State purchase these houses at the same price they were sold to the foreign investment funds. The properties could then be used for social housing.
Homeless activist Father Peter McVerry predicts a further 25,000 people will be evicted next year – something the Taoiseach Enda Kenny refutes.
With more evictions and repossessions comes more demand for more housing from the government.
Between vulture funds, the homelessness crisis, younger buyers being priced out of the market, and the huge under-supply of rental properties, housing has become the biggest issue for hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland.
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“vulture” is too benign and “wolf” is to noble.
I would call them the poisonous snake funds, sly, quiet, stealthy and lethal. The Black mambas of the Financial world.
3 mortgages /loans on apartment, house and business.
Hedgecraic wasn’t just for fun. They have many needs according to the taoiseach including paying just €8,000 in tax on €10 billion of assets. Is that part of their needs. When they actually allowed to have their say before the finance act and the planned changes by Michael noonan. You know it stinks.
A vulture fund that is suing dozens of Irish borrowers was among a group of financiers and hedge funds that met the Department of Finance ahead of plans to close a tax loophole.
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Finance officials met three executives from CarVal, the American vulture fund that bought €2bn in Irish loans, before the Finance Bill was published to discuss closing the loophole that allowed foreign investors in Irish property to pay little or no tax.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan announced in his Budget speech last year that he was clamping down on foreign investment funds that used special-purpose vehicles, or Section 110 companies, that generate little or no taxable income, to buy cheap property loans in Ireland.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed he allowed international and Irish investors to have their say on the planned tax changes before his Finance Bill was published.
Our political establishment believes in charity for the billionaire class and austerity for the majority:
“New figures show that officials in the Department of Finance met with private equity vulture firms 65 times in 2013 and 2014. Mr Noonan attended eight of these meetings”
Master of the High Court condemns house repossessions
Edmund Honohan says Government allowing courts ‘pump people into homelessness’
Mon, Jan 2, 2017, 01:00
Thousands of orders granted in the Circuit Court to repossess homes may be open to challenge because these courts are not applying EU law, the Master of the High Court has said.
Edmund Honohan criticised the Government for failing to properly protect people facing repossession and said it was instead allowing the courts to “pump people into homelessness”.
“There is a lack of joined up thinking and a huge amount of ignorance,” he told The Irish Times.
Circuit courts “up and down the country” were failing in their role as “agents” of the EU as current procedures did not ensure application of EU consumer legislation, he said, adding that this was the “fault of the Irish State”.
He said county registrars – who grant the majority of repossession orders in the circuit courts – “should not be dealing with these cases at all”, as they had neither the legal training nor the legal discretion to apply EU law
Its seems its all bring ignored what’s going on.
Looks like the majority of the Irish media ignored what he said.
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/master-of-the-high-court-condemns-house-repossessions-1.2922890&ved=0ahUKEwj08_PL2bTRAhVII8AKHWPPATAQFggaMAA&usg=AFQjCNFZY0usvF5S2rclV1YEXL9nc2XSNA&sig2=GikmjHOg9GSJd-kAlRak9w
littleone> How much detail would you expect an economist know about the law? Then consider how much a judge would now about economics. The reason funds can take advantage of the situation is because of the difficulty repocessing properties. As it costs so much money and time banks can get more money selling them and allowing the funds try to make money off them. This is cause and effect in play. To blame the current government is also crazy as the laws and inaction of successive governments allowed this situation. The reason is simple they don’t want to make unpopular decisions. Leads to inaction and allows companies take advantage of our laws.
@Kal Ipers: The cost of repossession in the circuit court are paid by those whose property is being repossessed.
Dave> Not really true as time costs money and it takes time. Costs are not always given and neither is repossession. Even when costs are granted if the persin is bankrupt you dont get it.If it was a cleaner system it wouldn’t cost so much and make sense to sell the debt at a discount to a fund. There is a reason they sell the debt and if they could afford to get the money back in a reasonable manner they wouldn’t sell. Why would they?
@Kal Ipers: Well said.
@Kal Ipers: Everything about these circuit court repossessions is a money making racket. The legal eagles surrounding it and the Registrars are making a lot of money out of people’s misery.
Dave> Registrars are public servants and earn no more money based on this. You will get people to green thumb such statements but it isn’t true. Legal staff are mostly in house so salaried employees. All this shows is how unaware the public truly are on how this works. It is a complete mess because the public don’t want the harsh reality of what should happen when you stop paying loans back. A post colonial hangover that people need to get over which has allowed vulture funds exist. Inaction with cause and effect.
@Kal Ipers: Today, 351 families face the eviction courts around the country.
@Kal Ipers: Registrars are also the County Sheriffs, except for two areas in the country. For every repossession they sign off in court they get commission, 5% on the first 100,000, 7% on sums above the first 100,000.
So don’t say the Registrars earn( if that’s even the right word) no money.
@Tony Daly: how about Praying Mantis funds?
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: even better!
@Tony Daly: All this with that vile Minister for finance who oversaw the country being thrown into austerity to save the banks and he stood blindly while banks from the world came back and let them pick over what was left. Fine Gael has destroyed our country but the rest of them would have helped if they had the chance too.
Many thanks to LittleOne And Daly below providing valuable information/perspective. The FG are chancers and shisters shafting Irish people – the Middle Ground. Noonan was asked a few years ago if he’s selling loans at such huge discount to vulture funds why he doesn’t offer to Irish people or companies or the owners ffs at same rate. Guess what he said? Ehh too complicated=I can’t be bothered. What a p*ick. Used to vote Fg but loath them now.
Why isn’t the “well known commercial bank” being named and shamed? FG and ff should be lynched. Hanged, every last one of them.
@king Tut: I assume nervousness.
That’s a bit strong tut.
The vulture funds. Your misfortune is their opportunity.
Tax free opportunity.
And Noonan will roll out the red carpet
What the article is not stating is these people would have no problems if they bothered to pay their mortgage.
The only people that need to worry about vulture funds are those who think they can get away with breaking the law – ie not paying their mortgage and continuing to live in the property.
@Fred Johnson: what about those that were paying their loans?
Those were sold to vulture funds also. Or are going to ignore that part.
I feel like an idiot. I should have just stopped paying my Ulster Bank loan’.
should have just stopped paying my Ulster Bank loan if this was going to happen,” said one Ulster Bank customer who has found his business loan thrown into a €2.5 billion property loan portfolio.
Servicing the loans
The same customer said he had never been threatened with legal action from the bank, and had been servicing his loans.
His business took a hit in the downturn, he said – however, he never stopped making payments. On one loan he was paying interest only. Another he was servicing fully – yet he received a letter to say his loan was now going to be sold.
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.thejournal.ie/ulster-bank-customer-loans-2790181-May2016/&ved=0ahUKEwiX16a74rTRAhUjOsAKHVdHByAQFgg6MAM&usg=AFQjCNEicSXIzosZll–mO2ab22TOLddJg&sig2=e1YQXjj9gmEoSymBzQLQkQ
If the government were turning a blind eye to these vulture funds I’d be angry. Instead they are actively encouraging it which disgusts me. The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men – Plato.
No doubt about it. This Fine Gael-led government will leave the country in a much worse state than they found it. Exactly who has benefited from austerity laws and penal taxes rail-roaded through the Dáil with total disregard for democracy and the ultimate human cost?? How do they (our very own Irish politicians) justify their own swollen bank accounts? Well??? Mary Power (Mrs)
An absolute indictment of this and successive Governments Social Policy has left the Country in the hands of foreign vulture funds. They also own lots of land and are essentially controlling the market pushing up rents etc. David McWilliams said people need to have a stake in a Country. Irish People as a whole have no stake anymore..
Does anyone know we’re all banks involved in selling to vulture funds? Or just some?
If only some then which ones?
Primarily Ulster and Ptsb thought some old nationwide loans taken on by Aib may have been sold on
@donal: all of the Banks except AIB.
AIB is at an advanced stage of evaluation to sale of its non performing loan book and will sell the NPLs off if there is not too much opposition.
Only 15% have been sold off so far but that percentage will inevitably increase.
And BOSI
Cxnts
For sale, small country, convenient to Europe and U.K. Politicians highly compliant and people have a solid history of being exploited without complaint.
pay back the loan you got and it will be grand.
@the truth: the fact is that it is the unaffordable non performing loans which tend to be sold.
Unemployment, business failure, reduced income and other factors drive mortgages into arrears, especially non tracker mortgages at excessively high interest rates.
Except they don’t want you to pay it back. Even loans that have no arrears are basically cancelled at the whim of these parasitic vulture funds. If you’re unlucky enough to have a loan that’s sold, the vultures will say ‘pay me now, in full or I’m realising my asset by selling’. That’s the truth!!
@tony daly it’s makes no difference to someone repaying a mortgage who holds that mortgage once it’s being paid so the outrage at getting a letter is nonsense.
@Em Ni Mhurchu: yes, that is correct and then there is the desperate effort to try to find another lender to lend to you so that you can redeem the original mortgage. That is a good point.
@em ni that’s not the truth it’s a fantastic over the top rant.
@the truth: pleas see EmNi Mhurchu’s point,
@tony daly I did and it’s a crazy exaggeration .
@the truth: most mortgages are repayable on demand or on one month’s notice if the mortgagee wants repayment.
Traditionally mortgages were happy to let the mortgage run the full term in the case of standard annuity mortgages.
Vulture funds generally operate on a 30% uplift overall over a 30 month cycle as they want to move on to new victims.
Vulture funds have no interest in letting a mortgage run its full term.
In practice, most vulture funds prefer to buy NPLs because the default means that there is a much higher discount. Some banks prefer to sell a composite book of performing and non performing loans.
It is also possible to sell on only the arrears or the estimate deficiency exposure of negative equity and the estimated deficiency on a court ordered sale.
No – The Truth, it’s not a crazy exaggeration. It’s fact. It happens, especially where a borrower uses a non high street lender or uses collateral in one property to buy another.
@Tony Daly – thank you for illuminating The Truth :)
@Em Ni Mhurchu: thanks. I get the impression that the ironically named “the truth” has an undisclosed vested interest. He is always very eager, suspiciously so, to defend the Banks and the vulture funds.
Didn’t they say their house was nearly paid? So really they are just trying to hang on to their investment properties without having to actually pay for them and writing letters to complain.
Wally will be torn over this one. Bank vs speculator …
@the truth: How do you pay a mortgage when the banks have been engaged in mortgage fraud, with the connivance of governments for years. The mortgage contracts contain unfair clauses according to the EU, and many repossessions may be illegal and fraudulent.
The people highlighted in the article were paying, the account wasn’t in arrears, did that do them any good? Did the banks “engage” with them? the answer to both questions is NO.
There’s a land grab going on, facilitated by the government at every hands turn. It’s not just homes, or small businesses, farmers are being targeted as well. Small dairy farmers mostly. Encouraged by government to take out loans to increase production. Then the price of milk drops. And it’s send in the Vultures.
There’s 4 farmer suicides in Co. Meath alone last year. Farmers who got into financial difficulty doing as the government suggested. There is a human cost to this land grab that has yet to be examined.
@tony daly the only interest in have is it received such a letter and as of said originally it makes no difference who is prepay as long as I make the repayments my world didn’t turn upside down beacuse of a letter stop being so dramatic.
@em ri I see you are pretending not to correspond with me directly but are doing so anyway childish but ok if a person is paying a loan (taken out in good faith) properly in full and on time a lender will not and does not look for all monies to be repayed immediately as your original post stated so I say again it was a fantastic over the top rant.
@dave doyle are you talking about Ireland or Bulgaria where you live ?
@david doyle are you suggesting nobody should pay a mortgage beacuse of how the banks behaved?
@em ni so your talking about an investment property be careful landlords are not well liked on here ,and any idea of helping them won’t go down well.
@the truth: What i am suggesting is the whole situation is surrounded in corruption. Corruption that assists in this land grab.
Let me give you an example of corruption regarding housing that is just coming to light.
Ballaghaderreen, the refugees, the hotel, and it doesn’t stop there. The hotel was bought in 2015 by a Bermuda registered company. They also bought 50 houses in the nearby River Oaks Estate for E500,000!!!!.
That’s E10,000 per house. This at a time when people are crying out for affordable housing.
Did these houses come on the so called “market” first? Who sold them? NAMA? Are these houses available due to repossession by banks?
A Bermuda based company means that the tax liability is minimised. More lost revenue to the state.
Do you understand exactly what is going on in the country?
The disused hotel in Ballaghaderreen that is to be turned into a emergency reception centre was acquired by a development company that has also bought a number of other properties in the Co Roscommon town.
Combin Properties Limited, c/o Remcoll Capital, Bandon, Co Cork, bought the former 40-bed Abbeyfield Hotel in July 2015.
It is understood an associated company also acquired more than 50 houses in the nearby River Oaks estate for about €500,000 last year. Combin is not a registered Irish company. There is a company of that name in Bermuda.”
So this consortium from outside of Ireland decides to buy a disused hotel in the middle of nowhere in July 2015 and then the Department of Justice and Equality offers a tender for a Direct Provision Centre in October of 2015?
And the locals thought this hotel was reopening as a hotel and were not consulted at all?
“The awarding of the contract by the Department is a culmination of a nationwide “expression of interest” in October 2015 and assessments conducted in late 2015/early 2016 – the same time period where locals thought the Hotel was being readied for re-opening.”
Readied for re-opening? Hmmm…. So it wasn’t even ready to express an interest in taking refugees yet they get the contract??
What a lucky purchase…. Nothing at all suspicious about this. Nope… Just pure fluke… @Dave Doyle:
@Dave Doyle: This is corruption.
@gerry o rourke the stars of this little tale of woe have a home which is nearly paid (good luck to them for that) a business which is in trouble and a property which they rent , they want to keep the home, cut the business adrift and go interest only on the property and continue to rent it so in summary they are trying to pull a fast one and of course on here the people before profit and anti establishment headbangers refuse to see what’s going on and use it as a story of a family being bullied to attack .this case is everything you people should be opposed to landlords making money out of poor renters misfortune . it’s a long time since I was young gerry and I’m not and never was a member of any political party and I have a mortgage I am paying beacuse I looked for it and agreed to it.
@dave doyle yes indeed I do as I am living working and contributing to the pot that pays for it unlike yourself who is pontificating from abroad.
@the truth: Really? But you support a government that makes sure vulture funds take loads in profit out of the country, and never contribute anything to that “pot” you pay into.
@the truth: seems you have been missing what’s being going on in circuit courts but don’t worry. The master of the high court has spoken out.
Mon, Jan 2, 2017, 01:00
Thousands of orders granted in the Circuit Court to repossess homes may be open to challenge because these courts are not applying EU law, the Master of the High Court has said.
Edmund Honohan criticised the Government for failing to properly protect people facing repossession and said it was instead allowing the courts to “pump people into homelessness”.
“There is a lack of joined up thinking and a huge amount of ignorance,” he told The Irish Times.
Circuit courts “up and down the country” were failing in their role as “agents” of the EU as current procedures did not ensure application of EU consumer legislation, he said, adding that this was the “fault of the Irish State”.
He said county registrars – who grant the majority of repossession orders in the circuit courts – “should not be dealing with these cases at all”, as they had neither the legal training nor the legal discretion to apply EU law
Where are the vulture funds going? That’s right circuit courts…
@littleone should these institutions not be allowed to pursue the monies owed to them ?
@the truth: except in cases . Nothing is owed to them. The loans are up to date before the are sold to a vulture fund who then swoop in and demand full payment. I suggest you do some catch up reading on exactly what’s going on. Because it’s obvious your under a certain illusion that all is what your being told by banks and vulture funds it’s not.
Even SME can’t even find out from revenue if their loans are with a section 110 vulture fund.
complication arises for SMEs if they contact Revenue to find out if the fund that has their loan is a Section 110 company or not, as Revenue cannot confirm this for reasons of confidentiality.
@littleone absolute nonesnce no institution demands full immediate payment of a performing loan shop acting the eejit.
@the truth: are you living under a rock. Because its been happening all over the country. I suggest it’s you acting the eejit Because your obviously not up to date . Do you think farmers are committing suicide for fun? Vulture funds have swooped in and own huge swathes of farmland all over this country on loans that were performing. A bank sells loans including performing loans to vulture funds , a bank then writes to customer saying they will no longer deal with them , Loan has been sold. Who does the loan then be paid too? While they are in limbo vulture funds arrive you missed a payment now you owe full payment. It’s happening and if your not aware of it. What can I say .
@littleone I’m in the situation described in the article( except I don’t have a property which I’m making an income from that I don’t want to pay for) for the last couple of years and over have never had any problem with the lender beacuse I pay the agreed amount on the agreed time to suggest that tomorrow they will want the loan paid in full immediately is a nonesnce and I suggest you know that.
@the truth: There are cases of vulture funds upping the interest rates so as to make repayments unaffordable and force people from their homes or farms.
The truth,. here on the journal this story.
‘I feel like an idiot. I should have just stopped paying my Ulster Bank loan’.
should have just stopped paying my Ulster Bank loan if this was going to happen,” said one Ulster Bank customer who has found his business loan thrown into a €2.5 billion property loan portfolio.
Servicing the loans
The same customer said he had never been threatened with legal action from the bank, and had been servicing his loans.
His business took a hit in the downturn, he said – however, he never stopped making payments. On one loan he was paying interest only. Another he was servicing fully – yet he received a letter to say his loan was now going to be sold.
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.thejournal.ie/ulster-bank-customer-loans-2790181-May2016/&ved=0ahUKEwiX16a74rTRAhUjOsAKHVdHByAQFgg6MAM&usg=AFQjCNEicSXIzosZll–mO2ab22TOLddJg&sig2=e1YQXjj9gmEoSymBzQLQkQ
The truth if you want to keep defending vulture funds claiming they are wonderful and are not up to shenaghins. Be my guest . If you want to claim banks are not selling performing loans or have never done , be my guest. If your so naive to think vulture funds won’t demand full payment on performing loans that with banks , be my guest. You stay in your bubble…
@the truth: What you are claiming is how things should work, but the fact is it’s not how they work, or is what is happening.Once a vulture fund gets its hands on your mortgage, profit is all they are interested in. A quick return, nothing else.
When you have the EU stating mortgage contracts are unfair and flaut consumer protection law, the master of the High Court questions what the banks are doing in the circuit courts, housing stock being sold off for little or nothing, the benefactors pay little or no tax, you have to question what is going on, why it’s going on, and why the government does nothing to protect its citizens.
@Dave Doyle: You are correct. The so called “the truth” is wrong.
Vulture funds work on a short cycle of 30 months in and out with a minimum overall return of 30%.
Some of the loan books sold to vulture funds include both NPLs and non NPLs.
Vulture funds have no interest in being in the mortgage lending business. That is relatively low margin unless they price up the interest rate by a massive and unregulated amount The vulture funds are short term, quick in and out merchants.
Well people you all voted the so called government unto power. There’s an old saying. Be careful what you wish for. Remember the next time you stand in the polling booth make them suffer.
ThecNPLs are more attractive to the vulture funds because they can be bought much more heavily discounted.
@tony daly do you honestly expect a npl to be ignored by a lender if you lent someone money would you not want it back and take measures to retrieve it?
@the truth: the banks recklessly over lent on over priced homes, ignored fractional reserving and other prudent credit control measurres. The Banks used a credit bubble to stoke up a massive housing bubble. This was the cause of the mortgage default crisis. The later Govenor of the Central Bank described it as prices chasing credit chasing prices in an upward inflationary spiral.
Now the Banks, instead of doing their own dirty work, are selling off the distressed mortgages at massive dsciunts to the vulture funds which are doing the enforcement work. The Banks, heavily subsidised by the tax payers, are taking the losses while the vulture funds are taking the gains by forcing out distressed borrowers.
All mortgages can be called in, whether being repaid or nit,
The point or the article which alarmed me was the fact that people were told that they would have to vacate once their leases run out. What kind of leases were they, surely if you purchase a property under lease then you would need to make sure that it was a long lease with the option to buy out the lease. It wouldn’t make much sense purchasing otherwise.
@Chris Kirk: a reasonable question.
There are three categories:-
1. Owner occupier mortgages in arrears.
2. But to let mortgages where the mortgage to the landlord is in arrears and where there is a lease/tenancy which is terminated.
3. Large developers who rented instead of sold their residential portfolio and who have become insolvent or in receivership, so that their liability are acquired at a substantial discount by vulture funds.
@Chris Kirk: the mortgage holders of the properties who are renting them out to others ..
Does anyone else the panic here in government? Theyre scrambling Their actions and lack of legislation to suppress sell off of home loans to vultures exacerbates the homeless crisis even further 1) Ross Maguire and 2) the High Court part of the legal system are trying to right the wrongs of the political system in an attempt to protect citizens. Its unbelievable. Whilst I laud their action how can the government legislate to buy back property sold at the price the vulture funds bought it for? Sorry but the government cant take the vultures on. Initiating a compulsory purchase order against the vultures? Think of the judicial cost to the state?! They are too big. The government and ultimately us will pay a heavy price for their incompetence and total lack of foresight.
In articles like these please provide the name of the vulture fund; their address in Ireland, or the address of the law firm which represents them.
Has that disgusting excuse for a human being Michael Noonan banned the sales of loans to these funds.
Has there been a 50% tax rate imposed on these funds?
Is there a group that can support and assist families who will refuse to be evicted?
@Gerry O’Rourke:
It needs to be closed immediately and a tax rate of 50% applied retrospectively to their Irish assets.
Is there any way that that miderable excuse for a human being Mickey Noonan could face criminal charges for what he has done.
This is a disgrace and has to be totally illegal!
All we can do is blame our Government on this financial issue getting out of hand & making 10′s of 1000′s of people homelessness broke & suicidal over these Banks pulling the loans on people!
Bail the banks out and this is how they respond to that rescue. By absolutely screwing their customers to the wall for more money, regardless of the results for the families involved. You really have to wonder about the mental state of people who can make these decisions on a whim. Sickening.
@aboutallthethings: Ah but you see, these decisions are not made on a whim. They are a well thought out process which even our so called govt know about. Evil greedy people have been running this country for years now and its them who make laws to suit them and their friends. The whole question of law in Ireland is in dispute and if I hear anyone else say “but its against the law” I will ask them “whose law” . Most laws in my opinion are made to benifit the minority over the majority especially when it comes to money.
The problem is that in the ten years prior to the crash people were encouraged to get up to the hilt in debt on the premise that prices would always increase. Collective greed took over. Banks, builders, auctioneers, solicitors raced like lemmings towards the precipice knowing that the bubble would eventually burst leaving the gullible purchasers stranded. The purchasers were convinced by the system. The government got in on the act by having the purchasers pay huge stamp duty up to 9% of the price. The more gullible tried out the purchase to rent trap. The mantra was laissez faire ( let the market decide). When the market collapsed the governments decided let the victims ( the population oft get state) be collectively be punished for the mistakes of the greedy. If anything the government should have bought up what was being offered to the vultures at vulture purchase rates and then let the properties to recoup the expenditure. At least then the money generated wold have benefitted the country instead of it being “exported”. The banking sector should then have been forced to proportionately reduce the mortgage payments on the family home in line with the then value of the home. This balance of proportionality would be kept in place for the remaining duration of the mortgage. If the value of the property increased then the payments of the mortgage would increase in proportion.
Does anyone else see the panic here in government? Theyre scrambling Their actions and lack of legislation to suppress sell off of home loans to vultures exacerbates the homeless crisis even further 1) Ross Maguire and 2) the High Court part of the legal system are trying to right the wrongs of the political system in an attempt to protect citizens. Its unbelievable. Whilst I laud their action how can the government legislate to buy back property sold at the price the vulture funds bought it for? Sorry but the government cant take the vultures on. Initiating a compulsory purchase order against the vultures? Think of the judicial cost to the state?! They are too big. The government and ultimately us will pay a heavy price for their incompetence and total lack of foresight.
Looks like “the truth” has left the conversation.
@dave doyle looks like dave has left the country
@gerry o rourke respond to my comment to you about you supporting a landlord who wants to go interest only on a property but continue to rent it out at the market rate which surely this is what you should be totally opposed too .
At the end of the day we must ask what’s in it for the Ministers involved and why are they letting these companies operate tax free .
A good and moral solution should be that mortgages cannot be sold on without the agreement of both parties, the lender and borrower on family homes. When you sign a mortgage contract with an organisation its is immoral that they should be allowed to sell it on to anyone without consent. Of course our slimeball masters will never buy that.
Minister Noonan is a fat f–ker who never give a dam about the Irish people, he is only interested in the big high profile people he meets and can get something from. It is time to get this parasite out of office and back under the rock he crawled out of in limerick.
Having watched the TV programme “the great Irish sell off” I now admit that I was in a state of complete ignorance of the situation that was being created and the inhuman treatment of our citizens to benefit the wealthy and faceless Corporations.
My viewpoint was confused/obfuscated by Government ineptitude, difference between cant/won’t pay mortgage holders and the extreme Left. My God, what have we done to our little Country?? How can we recover without over reacting and putting in Government even more self centred and incompetent politicos. As a grandfather I am deeply ashamed of what I have bequeathed to my grandkids.
We dealt with all this before during the land wars. Time to take the gloves off.
Dead right John but will these questions be answered, dont hold your breath.
Redress scheme looming large for some future Government – Irish home loans sold at knock down prices to vulture funds and LAs without first refusal offered to occupying families or ordinary Irish citizens.
Referendum required to protect family homes like in the German Constitution.
B***ards
A relation of mines mortgage was sold to a vulture fund and he is happy about it as he thinks he will be able to do a deal with the fund that he couldn’t do with his bank. The banks won’t do deals with anyone.
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