People seeking council help amid home repossession fears double

“I’m waiting for the bailiff to knock on my door, take my keys and throw me out,” says Jose Da Costa Diogo, one of thousands of people told their homes will be seized this year.

The 65-year-old learned he would lose his home in Thetford, Norfolk, during a 10-minute live county court hearing earlier this year.

The interest-only mortgage on the three-bedroom property was taken out more than 20 years ago in the hope that he and his then-partner would eventually save enough to cover the equity amount.

But the breakdown of the marriage and his ex-wife’s departure to Brazil in 2015 left Mr Da Costa Diogo unable to repay the £80,000 outstanding.

Since his ex-wife still had both the mortgage documents and the title to the property, he was unable to sell the property to cover the outstanding amount.

“I tried to do the right thing and keep paying all the bills,” he said. “After 25 years, I have nothing to show for it… but I still have to keep living.

“I will be homeless.”

court figures Shows number of mortgage recovery orders in England and Wales to reach 10,853 in 2024-25 – the highest figure in the last five years.

Experts say the increase is due to several factors including interest rate increases and the increase in the overall cost of living.

Mr Da Costa Diogo registered as homeless with his local authority, Breckland Council.

He is far from alone.

The BBC asked every British council with responsibility for housing how many people had become homeless as a result of mortgage foreclosures.

According to the 240 councils that provided comparable data, this number has doubled; While it was 1,517 in 2022-23, it increased to 2,370 in 2023-24.

In the most recent year it was 3,406.

People in local government say the remarriage of those affected by requisitions is putting increasing pressure on municipal resources.

Tom Hunt, who chairs the Local Government Association’s Inclusive Growth Board, said: “As more and more people turn to their councils for help, local authorities are being forced to stretch budgets further.

“The temporary accommodation crisis facing councils is getting worse.”

Lucy Davies sees the devastation that repossession can create on a daily basis.

As housing law counsel at Suffolk Law Centre, she volunteers her expertise to those in need in courts across Suffolk and Essex.

“I see this affecting a lot of people,” Ms Davies said.

“People face difficulties that are largely through no fault of their own.

“There are often mental health issues, there are employment issues, there are family issues, and I think that can get out of control very quickly.”

On the day the BBC joined Ms Davies for a day at Ipswich County Court, where she was volunteering at the Ipswich County Court Advice and Representation Service, none of the five people facing mortgage recovery cases turned up.

He said it’s often a symptom of shame, despair and a sense that losing one’s home is a foregone conclusion.

“Coming to court is pretty scary, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”

He urged people to seek advice as soon as possible and said the cases he was seeing were becoming “more established or more serious”.

He said it was becoming increasingly difficult for people to access legal help regarding housing.

Paul Gorton, of the Law Society’s housing law committee, agrees.

He said the historical lack of investment in legal aid meant fewer and fewer law firms were able to offer legal aid housing advice.

“Many people are too well off to qualify for legal aid but cannot afford legal advice themselves,” Mr Gorton said.

“We have both legal aid provider deserts and restrictive eligibility criteria that leave many people in limbo.”

A Department of Justice spokesman said it recently announced “the first major funding increase for housing legal aid in three decades – a 24% increase.”

“This investment will help ensure effective access to justice for some of the most vulnerable in our society, while supporting a more stable and sustainable legal aid sector,” the spokesperson said.

Karina Hutchins, director of the mortgage policy team at UK Finance, the banking and financial services industry trade association, said trying to repossess a home was “always a last resort” for lenders.

While the number of mortgage repossessions has risen rapidly in recent years, current levels remain “historically low,” he said.

“Repossessions are very rare indeed.”

He said about 2,000 homes were repossessed in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 13,000 homes in the same quarter of 2009 following the 2008 financial crisis.

“I can imagine that clients are really anxious and distressed when faced with financial difficulties, but they don’t have to go through it alone,” Ms. Hutchins said.

“The sooner they contact their mortgage lender, the more support and assistance the lender can give them and the more likely they are to get their mortgage back.”

He said options offered by lenders included reducing mortgage payments to allow time to return to normal, budgeting and other tools to understand their “full financial situation”, and advice on debt relief agencies and support organisations.

Henry Sabati McRae, who lives in Croydon, south London, has so far managed to prevent the property being repossessed.

Mr McRae’s financial troubles, who trained as a software developer, followed the deaths of his brother in 2020 and his mother in October 2023.

The 51-year-old actor has been unemployed since October 2024 and has not been able to get a new contract despite applying for hundreds of jobs.

“It doesn’t matter how much you save,” he said.

“It fades away within a few months. I managed to drag it out as long as I could because I was pretty conservative with my situation.”

• If you are touched by this story or would like support, you can find organizations offering help and information at: BBC Action Line.

Despite this, the mortgage debt on his two-bedroom flat eventually rose to around £13,000 and his bank said it would try to buy it back unless that figure was reduced below £8,000.

“The most important thing for me at that time, and I think for everyone, was to keep the roof over my head,” he said. “Otherwise it gets out of control.”

To make ends meet, he started selling his belongings on an internet auction site and borrowing money from a friend.

Like many people the BBC spoke to who faced confiscation action, Mr McRae said the experience was so “humiliating” that his instinct was initially to “close the curtains”.

But he said realizing he wasn’t alone and talking about it helped him plan his “solution,” just like an IT problem.

Businessman Mike Williams, who lives 10 miles (16 km) south of Mr McRae in Caterham, Surrey, also avoided recapture.

After separating from his wife, he took on the mortgage of the house he built himself.

Repayments of the interest-bearing loan taken 20 years ago have tripled in three years.

This, he says, left him with “almost no disposable income.”

In court, he renegotiated a repayment plan that would add an additional 20 percent to his monthly payments.

In five years, when the mortgage is due, he plans to sell the two-bedroom house he and his wife built from scratch.

“This has a lot of sentimental value to me, so yes it is heartbreaking,” he said.

As for Mr. Da Costa Diogo, his bank seized his property.

Within the month of the property being repossessed, the BBC saw a three-bedroom property similar to Mr Da Costa Diogo’s on Thetford Street being marketed for £160,000 – almost twice what it owed.

Within hours of losing his home he was given emergency accommodation in a small ground floor studio in north Suffolk.

“I left my house with a suitcase and a bag full of basic supplies and told the municipality, ‘I’m homeless.’

“It’s a roof over my head. I try to keep things simple because what’s the point of complicating things?

“I live and move on.”

With additional reporting by Zoe Dennis and Stephen Menon