Increasingly, lenders and charities are seeing home owners handing over the keys of their homes to building societies and banks. People are getting deeper into debt and the main debt is normally their mortgage, which causes deep anxiety and stress. It seems that they are the end of their tether and feel that they can't stand the thought of actually meeting the issues to be faced by letting it get to the stage of court proceedings.



This is a sad state of affairs and a recent report states that High Street Lenders are "amazed" by fast growing numbers of home owners looking into voluntary repossessions. It appears that there is a trend to return to the state of affairs experienced in the early 1990's when people were just returning their keys rather that contacting their lender and trying to find a way through things.

The recession has hit lots of people in a very short time. The housing market was buoyant in recent years and lots of people went into their homes full of hope regarding the eventual clearing of the mortgage and with confidence that the monthly payments would be manageable. Falling house prices, increasing likelihood of unemployment and a major recession have taken the shine off their dreams and many are deeply distressed and embarrassed to admit that they are unable co cope with the repayments. They would rather just give back the keys than face the lenders with the embarrassing facts.

It really doesn't have to be like this. Your bank or building society is hearing of problems like this every day. You're not alone and most certainly your lender wouldn't want to lose you in this way. They'd rather keep your custom and try to help out a way of helping you to stay in your home and get back to the financial stability and confidence you had at the start of the home-owning journey. If you are really trying to find help and willing to contact the lenders, giving them all the facts, they may well be able to make some arrangement to help and to avoid the distress of going to court.

The fact is that even if you were to give up your home voluntarily, you could still be in financial trouble. Houses which have been repossessed are very often disposed of through house auctions. Lenders will obviously require their money back and especially if you've not been in your home for an appreciable time, the amount which the auctioneer is able to achieve may not even be sufficient to pay your debt in full.

If you have several small debts, all designed to get you out of trouble, they can mount up unbelievably. It may be possible to go through these and consolidate them into one more manageable loan. Most certainly a financial adviser will be very up to date with all aspects of debt management and you could be pleasantly surprised at some of the help that they can give. Whilst not everyone can be helped in this way, it seems that around two thirds of ask for help from one of the major debt organisations can be successfully given help and advice to enable them to stay in their homes.

Don't hesitate to ask for advice. Ask for whatever help you need, be completely open with you lender and you may well be able to work out how to handle things, until everything picks up again.