Do you remember, back in April, (and if you do remember, then you're not getting out enough) we wrote about the Devon widow taking Barclays to court to try to weasel out of test the fairness of a 1998 agreement to pay back 75% of any appreciation on the property's value on sale? These mortgages were called Shared Appreciation Mortgages. She liked them at the time, for their tiny interest rates. Now that one was costing her almost six times the loan amount (and everyone was getting tiny interest rates) she wasn't so keen. The latest is that more than 300 borrowers have been granted a Group Litigation Order by the High Court, so they can try to sue Barclays and Bank of Scotland collectively.

The case is being handled by RWP solicitors, with 126 claims filed so far and a further 200 currently being processed, but the number is expected to increase significantly now the group order has been granted.

They'll be paying around £5,000 each to raise some "complex" ("time-consuming", "expensive") points of law.

Remember the shared appreciation mortgage? [April 29, 2009]
HBOS's suffering Sam widows/widowers [January 7, 2008]

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