Mr Praed was a very nice, posh 73-year-old gentleman. He sounded as though he thought the Queen were frightfully common.
He was living in a luxurious cottage overlooking the South coast. Very picturesque – the sort of place Hugh Grant and Colin Firth would take their love interest to for the weekend.
Mr Praed had an eye condition which meant he couldn’t open his eyelids (unless he used matchsticks I guess). I’d read some lady author had the same condition – it didn’t look fun. Mr Praed also had lots of ailments, all related to his age.
He hadn’t paid anything to his mortgage for five years. Quite a while.
We had held off on promises of payment for a long time. To pay us, he was going to auction off some fine cigars and vintage wines, I kid you not, but no money materialised.
We offer a scheme for customers where we help them with the sale of their property.
Mr Praed had been marketing his property for sale for nearly the full five years he had been in arrears. Obviously, he hadn’t really, because he had been declining each offer and putting off all interested parties.
Mr Praed was placed on our Sell Your Property scheme, obviously eager to avoid paying or being repossessed. After two years of being given the run around by Mr Praed, he was reluctantly removed from sale.
We assumed that he just didn’t have any monies to pay his mortgage but didn’t want to sell the property. His property was worth £500,000 and he owed us £200,000. He should have been able to afford a smaller property whilst getting rid of us harassing him.
But he had lived there for 50 years. He obviously didn’t want to move. Would you? It didn’t have a happy ending.
