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Comment by simonswords82 | Hacker News Reader

I’m sorry but I just don’t see how “many will lose their homes”. Mortgage companies are ruthless but not in the business of turfing out families that legitimately cannot afford their repayments.

Evicting people is risky long winded and generally speaking their last option.

Unless you've got some data to back up what you are saying in which case I’ll shut up.

Edit: Lots of replies saying "but they're not charities etc...". Of course I respect that. I also respect that not all lenders are created equal. If you miss a payment to the mafia you're going to get a different reaction than say to Lloyds bank.

I'm referring to your typical UK high street lender. They will not hoof you out of your house if you miss or under pay on one or two payments. Of course, if you do not engage with them and setup a repayment plan - then they will of course take further action.

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But.. people won't miss one or two payments.

They'll miss one payment, then never make another payment on those mortgages ever again.

If your fuel bill was £800 per year, and you're keeping your family alive on £20,000 (as many are), then it's now almost £2k. That was before any of this happened.

Your mortgage was maybe £250 a month on a variable rate because that's all you could get - and were terrified houses would go up even more if you didn't take it. Now your mortgage is almost £700 per month, and rising.

At the same time, the value of the £20k you earn is collapsing, so the food bills you were already struggling with are skyrocketing too.

Ask any of the folks on here that are based in middle America how much sympathy the system had for them in 2008.

Having forgiving policy only works if the government has enough money to protect you - the money is crashing already and after Truss & Kwarteng's nonsense last week any further support packages will make it.. Venezuelan.

> Mortgage companies are ruthless but not in the business of turfing out families that legitimately cannot afford their repayments

No, they're in the business of lending money and making sure it's repaid. They're no charity.

> Mortgage companies are ruthless but not in the business of turfing out families that legitimately cannot afford their repayments.

Are you sure you didn’t mean “that legitimately can afford their repayments [eventually, with penalties]”? (Or perhaps “that temporarily cannot afford the payments”.)

If they cannot afford the repayments, that’s exactly when the lender should reclaim the collateral.

You made an edit, so I’m guessing you reread that part, but it still seems like the opposite of the correct version.

> Mortgage companies are ruthless but not in the business of turfing out families that legitimately cannot afford their repayments.

Isn't that exactly the business they are in? In any country.

I mean that's sort of what a mortgage is. If you legitimately cannot ever afford to repay it, well... you will lose the house. That's sort of what the deal is, right?

Eventually, sure. I can’t speak to the UK, but in New York a foreclosure takes at least 8-15 months. You must first fall significantly behind on your payments, then a 90 day intent to foreclose notice, and then the actual foreclosure process. Maybe things are significantly faster in the UK? Seems unlikely that the UK government would allow mass evictions over this coming winter.

When I lived in the UK my experience was that not only me, but a lot of folks in my age range back then ("young professional") moved all the time. The tenant protections were pretty appalling, particularly if you rented from a private landlord. It does not seem very unlikely that people will lose their homes and have to move.

UK tenant protections are not the greatest, but I wouldn't call them 'appalling'. However, this is talking about people who own their home but have a mortgage.

Well I let other people judge how they are. However to this point:

> However, this is talking about people who own their home but have a mortgage.

Well a friend of mine got kicked out of his house as a renter because his landlord declared bankruptcy. And apparently that person owned 6 other properties and he was not the only one who lost their place of living.

Yeah you are right, I didn't think about that.

> Mortgage companies are ruthless but not in the business of turfing out families that legitimately cannot afford their repayments.

German mega-landlord corporation Vonovia announced just a few days ago that they will evict everyone too far behind on payments for heating [1], in order to pacify investors.

Never trust rabid capitalism to keep the people in mind. For the beancounters, all that matters is the current stock price.

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/nebenkosten-vonovia-droht-...

Isn't the alternative to say "you can stop paying us because we're not going to evict you no matter what"?

The alternative would be to say "we won't evict you as long as you can reasonably demonstrate you're doing your best, and we will use our significant political connections to fight for more government aid and/or price caps on energy". This is what common-good organization landlords ("Genossenschaften") are doing now.

But that is not the point of what is going on here with Vonovia. The "problem" that Vonovia and other landlords face is that rent raises for existing contracts are capped at 15/20% over three years, while new rent contracts are capped at 10/20% above the "average rent" aka Mietspiegel, which is determined by looking at the last years' worth of new rental contracts. The result is that many old rental contracts are sitting far below average rents... and now Vonovia can abuse the current heating cost crisis to evict people and put the units at current market prices.

> too far behind

That could mean anything.

The details are in the article. Basically, the legal framework allows eviction initiation if people are behind in either rent or heating costs ("Nebenkosten") for over two months worth of rent.

Unfortunately, given the exploding heating costs, for some cases you can rack up two worths month of staying behind in rent in just one month of heating costs - and unlike with COVID, rent protection legislation hasn't kept up in speed with exploding costs.

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