Mortgage News
Final call to arms for affected West Brom borrowers
Borrowers affected by the West Bromwich Building Society’s decision to increase buy-to-let tracker rates have until Friday to sign up to a group action against the lender.
The mutual announced its decision to increase its tracker mortgages by two percentage points last year, sparking a landlord campaign which claims the West Brom had no legal grounds to make the move.
The members behind the campaign have instructed Cotswold Barristers to bring the claim to court with barrister Mark Smith named as the nominated counsel.
The group had initially sought 250 mortgage cases to be part of the action but this target has already been passed with 295 mortgage cases signed up. Mark Alexander, a borrower affected by the West Brom’s decision and leader of the campaign, said he hopes this number will rise further by Friday’s deadline.
“We have been delighted with the response and we hope the figure will top 350 by the end of the week,” he told Mortgage Solutions. “We have some landlords in there who have 10 or more mortgages while others have one or two.
“We believe this is the biggest lawsuit the UK has ever seen against a mortgage lender and hopefully a victory will provide to lenders that a tracker is a tracker.”
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Borrowers affected will be charged a fee of £1,509 per mortgage represented and must sign up using the Property 118 website by 5pm on Friday 28 March.
“The claim will be for a declaration that the purported power to enforce the rate rise is excluded from the contract, which only allows alterations in line with Bank of England base changes,” added barrister Smith.
“If we succeed the West Brom will be held to the terms of the contract and will refund all overpayments as well as meeting our costs. We believe the case has a value of some £19m ps to the West Brom.”