Worried about your mortgage?
In arrears?
Concerned about losing your home?
The ‘Defend Our Homes League’ is on your side.
Use our site to gain expert legal and financial advice.
Find out what you should and most definitely should not do.
Take part in a discussion on how the government should deal with the crisis.
Become part of a campaign to keep people in their homes.
New Beginning is a recently formed group of business people, lawyers and concerned citizens coming together in an attempt to deal with the most pressing social, economic, legal and political issue facing Ireland today.
If you have no legal representation, New Beginning will arrange for a solicitor and barrister to represent defendants in actions brought against them by lending institutions concerning the repossession of their family homes.
Hi all, Allsops auction this thursday, 1st march, Shelbourne Hotel, 10.30am. Join Defend Our Homes picket at 10.15am. dermot Connolly.
I was pleased to be a part of a protest which stopped an eviction going ahead in County Laois yesterday, 20th February. a group of 30 to 40 people from the United Left Alliance, the Defend Our Homes League, Freedom from All Debt, and the Anti Eviction Task Force mounted a peaceful protest which persuaded the deputy sheriff and his merry men (two Gardai and a guy in a suit, no doubt representing Ulster bank) to give up and try again another day.
The house was being repossessed on behalf of Ulster Bank. the repossession order was granted not by a judge, but by the local court registar, who alos happens to be the county sheriff, who gets a fee for carrying out repossessions. There is a case coming before the High Court in April which is challenging the constitutionality of this antiquated and cosy arrangement.
The idea of a mortgage write down has been dismissed by the government. A mortgage write down would solve the problem of negative equity facing large numbers of householders, especially those who bought at the height of the property boom. Put simply, it means if you bought a house valued at say €350,000, which is now only valued at €200,000, your mortgage would be written down to reflect today’s valuation.
The government has put forward two objections to this, both of which are wrong. Firstly they speak of the ‘moral hazard’ of what they refer to as ‘debt forgiveness’. This is a government which found no moral hazard in handing out €700 million to unsecured bond holders of Anglo Irish Bank this week. The people who bought houses at hugely inflated prices were forced into this situation by bankers, developers and Fianna fail led governments who deliberately created the property because it brought huge profits. The same banks and developers are bailed out at enormous costs but ordinary people just have to get on with it.