Mortgage hassles spark 500 complaints
Almost 500 aggrieved house buyers in the North made complaints to the financial ombudsman last year.
Grievances ranged from the mis-selling of mortgages to failing to calculate the correct payments necessary to pay off the house loan.
Around 192 of these complaints would have been upheld, according to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
An expert from the University of Ulster said it could take a generation to instil “financial sophistication” in people.
“That generation of people here who smoked and drank heavily have mostly died now, that is the generation which wouldn’t know a current account from a deposit account and there is no question the younger generation is more financially aware,” UU economist Michael Smyth said.
“It could take 20-25 years to catch up,
“Northern Ireland has been an economic back-water supported by public expenditure because we could not function as a normal economy for 30 years and that has produced a level of complacency and indolence and financial inertia.”
There were 480 Northern Ireland complaints about mortgages to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The Ombudsman refused to say how many were upheld or give details but they estimate that up to 40% of claims (192) are validated.
Mr Smyth added people in the North were lagging far behind the rest of Ireland and said Protestant working class areas were less financially savvy than their Catholic neighbours.
“If you look at economic inactivity, in inner-city Protestant areas it is stemming from the legacy of the Protestant Ascendancy, working class people are not enjoying progression to jobs which they used to,” he added.
“Communities in parts of Belfast and Londonderry are left without any support mechanism whereas in the Catholic areas education is the way out of that.”
The Law Society, which regulates solicitors in the North, took one member off its register last December for mortgage misdemeanours.
Gavin Cumiskey, 30, was struck off last December after misusing clients’ money from a property sale. He worked for Belfast-based Kevin Winters and Co.
Cumiskey has been investigated by police.
In one case he failed to pay off a mortgage owing on a property, and in another it took him 77 days to discharge the mortgage.
A spokeswoman for the service said: “We have seen complaints about administration, examples where there’s been mortgage under-funding or where the mortgage has been incorrectly calculated and they are paying less than they should be (to clear the debt).”
