We had to move to pay off toxic 125pc mortgage

MARK COOPER and his partner Liz Rusted were forced to relocate their family to pay off their crippling Northern Rock Together Mortgage.

The couple (pictured right with children Kaitlyn, nine, and Tamsin, two) had paid £189,000 for a one-bedroom flat in London in 2006.

They had a £15,000 deposit but used the loan’s top-up feature to borrow an extra £30,000 to consolidate some debt.

These mortgages were notorious for allowing homebuyers to borrow up to 125pc of the property value. In this case, the couple borrowed 108 pc. When their first daughter, Kaitlyn, came along two years later they realised they needed a bigger home.

But they were told they couldn’t take the Northern Rock mortgage to a new property. They were able to switch the main home loan to Nationwide, but under the terms of the Together Mortgage the top-up loan had to stay with Northern Rock Asset Management (NRAM) where the interest rate rocketed from 5.99 pc to 13 pc.

Over the next five years, Mark and Liz, 42, paid £16,000 to NRAM, of which £15,500 went on interest, and cleared just £500 of the actual loan.

Mark, 43, who works as a business development manager for a charity, says: ‘The repayments were crippling and we were constantly watching our spending.’

In December 2016 they decided the only way to free themselves of the debt was to move to Milton Keynes, where homes are cheaper, and use the equity released from their London property to clear the loan.

Mark says: ‘We’re so disappointed with how we were treated by an organisation we had no idea would get into financial trouble. We were saddled with debt we could only repay by uprooting our family.’