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Mortgage Help Direct Gov Uk

Question: What is the pregnancy pay in the UK?

I read this piece on direct.gov.uk, and it said that pregnant women can take up to 39 weeks leave, however, you get paid 90% pay for first 6 weeks & for the next 33 weeks you get only £112.5 per week. That isn't very fair, is it? How would a single mother pay her mortgage at that rate? I'm not sure if this is the way it works.

Answer: hi
i work for NHS. this is what my hospital policy says,
you need to check with your employer for their policy, but it should not be very different

Eligibility and Entitlements for Maternity Leave
3.1.1 All employees are entitled to 39 weeks ordinary maternity leave (OML),
regardless of length of service.
3.1.2 Employees who intend to return to work1 after maternity leave are entitled to
take a period of additional (unpaid) maternity leave (AML) of up to 13 weeks.
They are therefore entitled to up 52 weeks maternity leave (39 weeks OML,
13 weeks AML).
Eligibility and Entitlements for Maternity Pay
3.2.1 There are two types of maternity pay as follows:
− Occupational Maternity Pay
− Statutory Maternity Pay
Entitlements to these will be dependent on a number of factors, including
length of service and intention to return to work after maternity leave. The
differences are outlined below.
Occupational and Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance pay
periods can start on any day of the week aligning maternity leave and pay
start dates.
Please also refer to section 3.7 “Temporary Staff”.
3.2.2 Occupational Maternity Pay
Employees who have completed 12 months continuous service with the
Trust or another NHS employer at the beginning of the 11th week before
their Expected Week of Confinement (EWC)2, i.e. the 29th week of
pregnancy, may be entitled to the following:
− 8 weeks full pay (inclusive of Statutory Maternity Pay)
− 18 weeks half pay plus Statutory Maternity Pay (if half pay plus SMP or
Maternity Allowance exceeds full pay then half pay will be reduced
accordingly)
− 13 weeks statutory maternity pay or maternity allowance
Statutory Maternity Pay is paid at the rate of 90% of earnings for the first 6
weeks followed by a lower set rate for the remaining 33 weeks3
In order to qualify for occupational maternity pay, the employee must:
− Follow the procedure as set out in section 3.3
− Continue to be employed by Wrightington, Wigan & Leigh NHS Trust at
the 11th week before the EWC
− State on the application form their intention to return to work for the Trust
or other NHS Employer for a period of three months following the period
of maternity leave
− State on the application form the provisional date she intends to return to
work
3.2.3 Statutory Maternity Pay
Employees who have been employed by the Trust for at least 26 weeks
into the qualifying week (15th week prior to the EWC) will only receive
Statutory Maternity Pay.
The entitlement to Statutory Maternity Pay is provisional on their average
weekly earnings being above the lower earnings limit for National Insurance
purposes.
Statutory Maternity Pay is payable for a period of 39 weeks. It is paid at the
rate of 90% of earnings for the first 6 weeks followed by a lower set rate for
the remaining 33 weeks2.
If earnings are less than £100 per week, the rate of Statutory Maternity Pay
will be 90% of earnings for the full 39 weeks.
3.2.4 Calculating Full Pay
For the purposes of Occupational Maternity Pay, full pay is calculated on the
basis of your average weekly earnings over the 8 week period leading up to
the last pay day before the end of the 15th week before the expected week of
confinement. This will includes leads, allowances, overtime and
enhancements.
All payments that are taken into account for National Insurance contributions
are included in this calculation. Half pay is half the amount of full pay as
calculated above.
3.2.5 At no time will the combination of Occupational Maternity Pay and Statutory
Maternity Pay exceed the employee’s normal average weekly pay.

Hope this helps

How To Find Help For Your Mortgage Repayment

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Mortgage Default Models

After the steep rise in subprime lending in the 2001-2006 period, followed by the credit crunch of 2007, some might ask, "If their borrowers can't pay, why did the lenders make these loans in the first place? Did they not want to be paid back?" To get to the bottom of this question, people need to understand how real estate lending has changed and what motivated the various participants.

Historically, a borrower went to a local bank or credit union when they bought a house. These institutions would typically require 20% or more as a down payment on the property. They would want a borrower to have good credit, documented income, and anything questionable like a collection would need to be cleared up and explained in great detail. A borrower might be able to purchase a home with as little as 10% down, but it would require extra money be paid to mortgage insurance from a highly rated financial institution. Most loans would be sold to quasi-government home loan institutions, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which required strict underwriting guidelines. Loans that could not be sold to these institutions (such as jumbo loans - those exceeding a certain amount) would likely need to stay on that local bank's books, so the underwriting would end up being even more stringent, since a default would impact the bank directly.

Over time, large interstate banks and thrifts such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual grew to dominate residential home lending. Local banks focused more on commercial real estate, small business loans, and other types of loans. While more impersonal, the underwriting was still sound. These institutions starting doing huge volumes of loans, and participating in packaging up and selling big batches of their loans (100 or more) to institutional investors like pension funds, insurance companies, and even hedge funds. These groups had huge appetites for these income-producing investments, especially those that were highly rated as "investment grade" by rating agencies like Standard & Poor's or Moody's. As long as you are packaging up 100 high quality loans, these loans might warrant an investment grade rating. Many financial institutions, however, decided they could greatly expand the amount of loans they could sell by lowering the bar on the underwriting standards. They would simply make loans to people with lower credit ("subprime"). They could also be flexible on documenting income, lax with historical income requirements or down payments, and allow people to obtain loans that they could afford only prior to the interest rate adjusting in the future. However, 100 low quality loans packaged up are not going to get an "investment grade" rating.

That was where the financial engineering came in. Imagine splitting a pool of 100 loans in to fourths: sections A, B, C, D. A was guaranteed to get paid first, then B, then C, then D. If A was guaranteed a certain return (such as 8% interest per year plus the original principal of the loans), even if a certain number of loans went bad, you would still have first priority to the interest and principal on the good loans. A could end up making its return without losing any principal, while D might end up taking a huge hit. Through this financial engineering, even batches of subprime loans could be packaging in such a way that the majority (the A, B, and maybe C) of the sections or "tranches" were considered investment grade and could be sold to a pension fund, while the low grade tranches could be sold to large risk-takers like hedge funds.

For awhile, this all worked out perfectly. Property values were soaring and people made their payments or paid back the loans by refinancing or selling their properties. Everyone involved made money. Then it all stopped. It turns out that people with poor credit eventually start missing payments. Property values started to decline and people owed more on their loan than their house was worth. People could not refinance and many just walked away from their homes. Financial models forecasting the amount of delinquencies and foreclosures were way too low and none of them forecasted a huge decrease in property values. It turns out, all tranches of subprime debt had problems, including the highest rated pieces. Also, many financial institutions like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch that were packaging and selling the loans ended up holding onto some of the lowest rated and now worthless pieces of subprime debt because they could not sell it, as many investors were skeptical of the ratings even before the real estate market started experiencing problems.

So the answer to the question, is yes, the lenders wanted to be paid back. They wanted to keep making money from selling these loans. However, they should have looked to history to know that some loans, no matter how you package them up, should never be made. They probably won't make that mistake again, at least for many years or until they forget the lesson learned.

About the Author:

Donald Plunkett is a real estate broker with Congress Realty, a
flat fee listing
company which serves the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Washington. Donald is a Certified Residential Specialist® and has been licensed since 1994. For more information, please visit
Congress Realty
.

Source - Understanding What Happened With Subprime Mortgages

Tracing the Causes of Today's Market Upheaval

Mortgage Help Ireland

Question: Is foreign mortgage interest paid 100% deductable against all US taxable income?

Property purchased in Ireland earning rental income. Is Irish mortgage interest 100% deductable from total taxable USA income (federral and state)?

Answer: James H's post tells you about mortgage options, but does nothing to answer your question. The fact that the property is in Ireland does not change the fundamental tax analysis compared with a rental property owned in the US (I assume you are a US citizen or green card holder). The mortgage interest is deductible in arriving at the net taxable income from the property. Once you've computed that, you will then need to determine whether you have a loss that may be suspended under the passive loss rules. Any suspended loss is carried forward indefinitely until you have income or sell the property. See IRS Form 8582 on the IRS's website at www.irs.gov.

Note that, under separate rules, the financing of the property using a foreign currency is effectively treated as an investment in the foreign currency itself. Any resulting gain/loss from paying off the mortgage principal in the event the dollar rises/falls relative to the euro will be taxable/deductible in the US.

negative equity explained (property)