So sad

[Elfingbell]

Last year I felt I had it all - loved my job, bought my first home with the man I loved and had dd, then:
We get hit with astronomical fees for 24hr fire watch in our apartment block. My partner left me for another woman when dd was a few months old. Covid saw me working from home and looking after DD I wasn’t performing at my best and have now lost my job.
I’ve spent 90% of my savings and this week will move back to my hometown and move in with my mentally ill mother.
I’m returning the keys to my apartment to the bank which means I’ve lost my deposit money but frees me from the mortgage, repossession wasn’t far off anyway.
I know I’m lucky having somewhere safe to go and some savings but I’m just so sad that It’s come to this.
I’m not looking for sympathy or advice I just needed to write it down.

You’ve been very brave posting this here.

I hope you take that courage forward with your dad and SM and repair the damage you’ve caused.

Thank you all so much, I never expected this, the kindness from strangers on the internet. It’s shown me that my selfish and self centred ways of old only further compounded my flaws. Looking out rather than in feels very foreign but much nicer.

I’m speaking to exDP in an hour and tomorrow I’m going to look at a studio flat and a bedsit in a neighbouring town.

Do it and get out ASAP

Gosh sorry to hear all this also your poor dad and stepmum:(
We all make mistakes in life

Love to you both

Hope your little one doing well ❤️❤️

Sorry you are having such a crap time around your property . That sounds really tough .

But absolutely you need to apologise to your dad and your step mum . Absolutely 100%.

I hope you get some positive news from you dad OP and hope that your chat with exdp goes well

I hope it all works out for you OP, this reminds me of my mothers family, so many fractured relationships beyond repair.

It's very brave of you to start the process as it can't be easy, and it's clear how your DM has been the catalyst for everything, but you have to take some of the blame yourself which you are doing, I hope your stepmum comes round, maybe she never blamed you deep down as she knew how terrible your DM was.

Rooting for you all

Hope it all turns out well for you OP.
Tbh your dad doesn't come out of this looking good either. Sounds like he took a back seat in the family dynamics and offloaded the parenting of his own children to your stepmum while he focused on his career. Poor woman.
Your behaviour was awful but you were a child who was hurting. Your family was broken up and you had to accept a new stepmum and step siblings in your life. In addition you had your mum filling your head with poison.

That was a really hard conversation, exDP was completely dumbfounded, he ended the conversation by telling me that he was glad were no longer together but believes I’m being sincere. He’s asked that I urgently find alternative accommodation and a good psychotherapist. He’s coming to collect dd next Thursday to have her for a long weekend at his parents house - they have an Airbnb annex in their garden so they will be able to see her and take her for walks etc.

Can I ask why you are behind with your mortgage.

Surely you would have been on a mortgage holiday so wouldn’t have gone behind.

We have only paid 1 mortgage payment since lockdown and now have been granted another mortgage holiday till end of January.

You know handing the keys back won’t stop the flat being sold at a loss and the mortgage company will come after you for the short fall.

Back in the 90s when people handed their keys back they were still chased for tens of thousands as their flats went up for auction and went for a fraction of what they owed and the mortgage companies went after them for the balance.

I wasn’t furloughed and I had already taken a mortgage holiday and got into some arrears due to fire watch fees, management charges that had tripled since I purchased and splitting up with my partner. He did continue to make a small contribution to the mortgage but I couldn’t afford all the fees and living costs and childcare on my own.
I then lost my job and wasn’t entitled to uc due to having savings and took another mortgage break and when I couldn’t find a new job and had spent nearly all my savings I started talking to the lender about an exit strategy.
Yes I do understand that should the apartment be sold at a loss they can come after me for the rest and if I’m working I will have to come to some sort of arrangement. At the moment the property is worthless because of the flammable cladding. I know other people who have done the same as me, we were all clamouring to get on the property ladder and took the first mortgage offer that came along.
Living in an apartment in London during lockdown has been horrible and I’m glad that I’m out, this year has shown me that none of us know what’s around the corner and I want to choose a simpler life without a huge burden of debt and a life that’s barely affordable on a good day.

OP, it's really good that you are looking at properties away from your mum, but will your credit score not be affected by not working and the situation with your property? It might not be as easy to move as you think. Although you do need to get away if you can.

You've grown up and been brave. Your sm sounds saintly tbh.
Remember that you have had months to come to your realisation about the family dynamic and this is coming at them from a standing start. Offering them the chance to have a relationship with dd still feels a bit like you bestowing something on them so maybe frame it as giving dd the chance to know good people iyswim.
I hope it works out for you all

@CoolYourBeansMySon yes I am worried about my credit history affecting my ability to rent and as I said previously I don’t want to be tied to a property and then find a job miles away. Both the places I’m viewing via video link tomorrow belong to an old school friends parents, they’ve said I can pay three months rent in advance and leave whenever I need to. They have known me since primary school.
My uncle has offered to be a guarantor for me in the future if I need one.

That's really great news Elfingbell. I hope that the virtual viewings go well and you're set up in a new place soon.

I don't think people understand the extent of the financial costs of the cladding scandal, we are talking about several hundreds of pounds per month for fire watch, plus hundreds more even just for some sort of insurance (these buildings are almost uninsurable now). Plus the management company will be billing all fees for investigation, scaffolding - you name it. On top of the usual maintenance fees which in London are already high. Potentially plus ground rent. Then a mortgage.

All without the problem even being touched. Yes, it's not ideal to surrender the flat but there are mental health implications to living in a tinderbox with your kid in an out-of-control legal situation with escalating costs. This isn't a simple mortgage arrears situation and it's a scandal that it's gone so far.

Did you try those We buy any house companies.
At least you might be able to either walk away with something or even just have a managed loss.

My worry is that you could find your normally £250,000 flat for example, that you have a £200,000 mortgage on goes to auction and fetches £75,000. If there are such huge problems then the person taking a chance on it isn’t going to be offering anywhere near enough to cover your mortgage.

WBAH type companies might be able to offer you something nearer your needs or at least have a sort of manageable short fall that you can come to some arrangement with your mortgage company

I would check out blocks of flats similar to yours around London. I have seen a few up for auction with Cash buyers only noted on the particulars.
See what they have gone for and what they were bought for.

I would spend a day doing some research as just handing your keys back and thinking that is the end of it isn’t what is going to happen.
At least atm you are in control and can come to some sort of agreement and mitigate your losses.
Once the mortgage company are in control they don’t care. They just want the place off there books and won’t care how big a figure you owe.

I read about this type of thing happening when I saw perfectly nice new flats saying cash buyers only

Apparently all apartment buildings have to be surveyed. The likelihood is that yours is perfectly fine but there are only something like 3 people qualified to do the surveys for the whole of the uk and it is going to take some time to get through everyone.

I would add up how much costs there are in keeping the flat going over the next, 5 or 10 years and knocking that off the price of the flat if there wasn’t anything wrong with the flat and you were selling it normally. Then knocking another £10-20,000 off as the cost of replacing the cladding if it was deemed unsafe.

I would have these figures on hand if you decide to try to sell and need to haggle over the price.
FWIW we are on our 3rd mortgage holiday since March.

Sadly I can people stuck in these flats going bankrupt. If they don't earn enough to stay for 3-5 years whilst it all gets resolved what other options are there really?

@Oliversmumsarmy thanks but I really did explore every available opportunity including wbah, they offered £12,000.
The issue I had was £480 per month fire watch fees £1,000 per month management fees, £500 ground rent before I got anywhere near meeting my living costs and I was still paying a retainer to nursery because if I’d found a job I was worried I would have no childcare.
I wasn’t entitled to uc because of savings. Even if I’d taken another mortgage break I was likely to be evicted by the management company.

I feel I was lucky that my lender was willing to cut a deal with me, them coming after me for the money will be less stressful than living on the 17th floor of a flammable box with my dd

[quote Elfingbell]@CoolYourBeansMySon yes I am worried about my credit history affecting my ability to rent and as I said previously I don’t want to be tied to a property and then find a job miles away. Both the places I’m viewing via video link tomorrow belong to an old school friends parents, they’ve said I can pay three months rent in advance and leave whenever I need to. They have known me since primary school.
My uncle has offered to be a guarantor for me in the future if I need one.[/quote]
Assuming they're clean and safe I'd go

1. Affordability
2. Distance from Mom

but Def take one. Not only is it a good deal, its also a show of proof that you're trying you get from under your mother's influence.

£1000 per month management fees.

What the hell are they managing? Was this the cost when you bought?

£500 per year ground rent is extremely high as well.

@ChochoCrazyCat

Hope it all turns out well for you OP. Tbh your dad doesn't come out of this looking good either. Sounds like he took a back seat in the family dynamics and offloaded the parenting of his own children to your stepmum while he focused on his career. Poor woman. Your behaviour was awful but you were a child who was hurting. Your family was broken up and you had to accept a new stepmum and step siblings in your life. In addition you had your mum filling your head with poison.

My dad was/is a real people pleaser so he would always put off difficult conversations rather than tackle issues within the family when we were growing up so I don’t disagree with you. So for instance I would do something like backchat step mum or go to a friends house after school without telling her that I wasn’t coming home, she would try and talk to me and I would give her the "your not my mum so you can’t discipline me" and storm off. Dad would come home and she would tell him, I would turn on the water works, deny that I’d backchatted, swear that I’d told her I wasn’t coming home and she was lying. Dad would never probe to get to the bottom of it, saying he would deal with it when I wasn’t so upset etc or he would take my side and dad and step mum would fall out over it which made me happy. If dad did try to take stepmum’ s side I would just unleash my dm on them both - it must have been awful for stepmum.

@Oliversmumsarmy no of course not, management fees had more than tripled and ground rent more than doubled.

Your Dad must really really really love you and your SM must really really really love him, and she must love you too - sending you a card when DD was born. I'm amazed he talks to you at all, and I'm amazed she reached out.

How do you know you've changed?

@Apileofballyhoo

Your Dad must really really really love you and your SM must really really really love him, and she must love you too - sending you a card when DD was born. I'm amazed he talks to you at all, and I'm amazed she reached out.

How do you know you've changed?

I can’t say that I’ve changed only my actions going forward can.

Growing up I believed that if dad hadn’t met stepmum that he would have been with my mother because that’s what I was told 2-3 times a week, every week. Even knowing that my dad had been a single parent for two years didn’t make me believe it wasn’t true.
Adjusting to three new step siblings and a step mother was huge and I was very jealous but things were fine until I was 11/12 when mum all of a sudden wanted to have us more and she became more controlling. Things just escalated from there and by the time dad remarried when I was 14 it was heading towards a complete shit storm.

Going to university made me realise that mum was getting sicker mentally, this is when her (imaginary) health problems started she took early retirement for health reasons. My dsis thinks it was in an attempt to stop us living our own lives, she would have a rota of us going to "care" for her at weekends.
Splitting up with my dp shone a massive spotlight on my own controlling behaviour, it’s the reason we split.
My dsis who has been a massive support started to talk to me about the stuff we used to do to stepmum/siblings and I began to feel guilt, remorse and an overwhelming need to atone for the wrong I’d done because I don’t want dd to have a mum like mine.

@Elfingbell I would actually tell your Dad and DSM what you've just written in a very much "I look back and I can see what happened" aspect.

Acknowledge to them that you want to change and you know your actions will speak louder than words and their forgiveness won't come easily.

I hope it works out, I'm sure your DSM knows your Mum was behind much of what went on and your Dad's lack of backbone contributed to it.

You freely acknowledge your spiteful behaviour was deliberate and a way of trying to control things, what a shame they didn't get you to see a therapist when your mother resurfaced.

Your DSM probably reached out when you had DD hoping you had matured and broken away from your mother enough.

Thanks Randomess