“… ‘Twas the week before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…”

… Then Surmount Investigations knocked on the door and informed the lady inside with her three children that the house was about to be repossessed! BUT please keep reading because this is not a tale displaying the hardened black heart of the Surmount Investigations team and how they made a family homeless seven days before Christmas.

This is the story of the depths we’re prepared to go to in order to help people AND the importance of always getting a pre-repossession report completed so that you have the most up-to-date intelligence in order to complete an eviction.

Our client asked us to complete a pre-repossession report on a home in Middlesborough – the mortgage was in default, the owner had stopped communicating for over six months, our client wanted to have a better understanding of access routes for instructing bailiffs and if there were any vulnerable people of children on the premises.

We headed down to Middlesborough the week before Christmas, took some photographs of the approach to the property and how it would be accessed from a public pathway and then we knocked on the door to be greeted by a harried young mum with three children playing noisily in the background.

We explained who we were, where we were from, that the property was in the process of being re-possessed and asked what her intended rehousing options were. The woman said that there had to be some sort of mistake, that she was a tenant and that her housing benefits are paid directly to the landlord so she doesn’t understand how there can be a default as he “gets £625 a month from the government that [she herself] never sees”.

We asked to go inside and talk and were quickly able to affirm that her landlord was indeed the named debtor concerned and that it was apparent he had been taking the housing benefit but not paying the mortgage on the property. The woman started to break down and sob that she’d “just got the house straight for Christmas” and “couldn’t be homeless with the kids at Christmas as [she] has no where else to go”.

We tried repeatedly to explain that it was unlikely that eviction proceedings would begin so quickly that she and her family would be needing rehoused over the Christmas period but she would not believe us.

We asked if she had contact details for the landlord and she said she only had a mobile number for him that he never answered and she’s never met him other than the first time he showed her the property. Ultimately, if our client was going to take a step off proceeding with repossession plans it would only be if contact had been made with the mortgage-holder and a repayment plan was put in place.

We also knew that our client would not pay for the tracing of the landlord straight-out-the-gate either… so we set to work there and then, for free, at the woman’s dining room table with nothing but a now ‘old’ mobile number, a name for the landlord and an iPhone to work off of.

Within 30 minutes we’d located a ‘possible’ ID on the gentleman via a potential business and promised the woman that we would get the client into contact with the debtor by hook or by crook and stave off any movement on the repossession until into the new year. She said that was all she wanted as she would definitely be looking for a new place to live in the new year anyway. We completed all the requirements for the pre-repossession order and secured all intelligence needed by our client and then set off to try and complete a ‘Christmas Miracle’.

… Just over an hour and change later, we rocked up at a business address in Blyth and hit the jackpot via the landlord-being-sought answering the door, confirming that he owned the address down in Middlesborough but “had been trying to get shot of it for years” and that he would take a phone-call there and then with our client.

The end result being that – in the aftermath of submitting our pre-repossession report – our client managed to settle all outstanding debts with the landlord before the year ended, the woman and her children will soon be moving into a new home, the landlord will be putting the property up for sale of his own volition again and the Surmount Investigations team got an extra present from Santa for their dedication.

Are you a creditor, lender, letting agent or solicitor who’s lost contact with your debtor and looking to potentially have to repossess a property or premises? We can help. Get in touch today at enquiries@surmount-investigations.co.uk.