Anyone know about 'mortgage holidays'?

I've never done this, but you should look first at your contract to see whether you have teh contractual right to do so. If so, just follow the procedure set out in that. If not, you're going to have to appeal to tehir better nature- assuing you haver a good relationship with your lender, they ought to be able to come to some kind of arrangement.

Thanks LouM - it didn't occur to me to check my contract as i assumed taking a break from payments would be so discouraged that they wouldn't set out rules for it in the contract IYSWIM.

We'll have had almost seven years of a perfect record with the same lender by then, and another three years of the same with a different lender, so i'm hoping they'd look kindly on us.

Trouble is, i don't want to discuss it with them unless i know we'll definitely have to look into it, in case they put a black mark against our name for being potentially unreliable [as indeed we are ?

I had a mortgage which allowed mortgage holidays but it was only for the amount that I'd previously overpaid. Could you talk to your lender about changing to interest only? Still not ideal as you wouldn't be paying back capital and you'd still have some outgoing but might be easier than a holiday.

Thanks Kegsey, we're already on interest only. See what i mean about last resorts

Our Halifax mortgage has a built-in 6 month grace period. You lose a little financially over the term of the mortgage, but I can see times where it would make short term financial sense.

Could you sell and move into something that you can afford?

I'm with northern rock - you can have a 1 month mortg holiday after each 9 months of making payments. we did it once, but it's best avoided. but i think with us it's a one month per go thing only.

i've heard that if you're in dire straits NR won't do interest only any more (as a temporary measure) just move straight to repo on non-payment because they want to get their investment back asap. hope that's not the case though, and more than that don't want to find out.

good luck with it all - definitely worth looking into.

In the current climate that might take a year though.

We had a mortgage break many years ago - it was a "perk" of our deal with the Halifax. Have a look at your terms, it's more common than you might think.

Thanks everyone. Hello Sunshine - that sounds positive - thanks for that.

Yes, it would be logical to move into something we can afford of course, but our situation is quite unusual. We are skint in the short term, but have more financial security on the way, so don't want to give up our property which has a fair bit of equity in it already - our mortgage is already far less than the value of the propety, and we have good reason to think it will continue to gain value [long term obviously, not in the current climate]. So we really don't want to lose it if we can possible help it.

Thanks everybody for your replies, much appreciated ?

I guess you've already cut all your other outgoings as much as possible?

Yes, absolutely. And as i mentioned, this would be an absolutely last resort - it's not even definite we'd have to do it. It's more a case of thinking what we could do to stay in our home rather than sell up if the worst came to the worst. Fingers crossed it won't come to that, and if it's going to happen, it's a little while away, but i do like to be prepared for the worst case scenario ?

We did it with the Virgin One Account, it was very simple to set up. I think we asked for 3 months or something like that, so not a huge amount was involved.

I thought so but thought I would ask the obvious ?. Hope it all works out.

As it happens we have just done this today with Northern Rock. Our mortgage stated we were allowed up to 3 months break, we have opted for 2 for now.

One thing I would advise is that if you do go for it make sure you get it confirmed in writing and also ask whether it will reflect on your credit file. Technically it shouldn't show as a missed payment on your credit as its an agreed holiday but I have seen lenders do that in the past.