The law of the strong: banks take away mortgage apartments from citizens

Yelena Ivanova

Tatyana Vakhrusheva has been paying a mortgage for an apartment in her native Kopeisk, Chelyabinsk region, in which she lives with the son of her deceased sister, for 7 years, says NTV. She has been raising her nephew for several years now and is very proud that he has a separate room, his own computer and everything a child needs at his age. Tatiana was widowed not so long ago - her husband was a military sailor, fought in Syria, and died there. But then a new misfortune came: bailiffs wrote off 23 thousand rubles from her account for utilities, because of this, one mortgage payment did not go through. The bank did not report the debt to Tatyana, but he regularly charged fines and penalties on the debt. When the amount exceeded the required threshold for terminating the contract, the bank demanded to return the entire balance of the debt at once. Vakhrusheva asked the bank to postpone - a refusal, offered to restructure the overdue amount - again a refusal. Of course, the bank knew what Tatyana's salary, who works as an accountant, was, otherwise how would she be given a loan, but this did not stop anyone. The bank employee in charge of working with "difficult clients", with barely restrained irritation, "reassured" the woman: they say, the case is in court, as he decides, so it will be that now to worry.

Svetlana and Maxim Dorgoyev have three small children and their only apartment is a mortgage. writes E1.ru. The family lives in Yekaterinburg. They saved up 1.5 million rubles by investing maternity capital and a regional allowance for children, borrowed 1 million from Primsotsbank at a usurious interest of 20% and bought a tiny 44-meter apartment. When Maxim lost his job in 2017, and Svetlana was pregnant with her third child, the family had a debt of 40 thousand rubles to the bank. Who would have thought that the bank would sell housing with three small children under the hammer for 40 thousand rubles? But he let it go, and did not even frown. Maxim and Svetlana began to fight for their home, after the first trial they filed an appeal. The “kind” judge said to Svetlana: “Why did you marry this non-Russian, but begging for poverty,” says the mother of three children. “I was at a loss, sat and said nothing. In the regional court at the hearing, the judge tried to intercede for us, the bank insisted that we were insolvent: according to the documents, I was on maternity leave, and my husband worked unofficially.

As a result, the apartment was sold for debts. A businessman acquaintance helped, who bought an apartment from new tenants and sold it to the Dorgoevs. Now they will pay for their housing not to the robbery bank, but to their savior.

In Ufa, Bogdan Demchenko's wife died of covid. He was left alone with three daughters. During the pandemic, Bogdan himself began to have problems with work. As a result - mortgage debts. Demchenko applied to the bank about a loan vacation, but he was denied this, although the law says that everyone is entitled to them. One problem - Bogdan did not submit his application in writing. After the intervention of the press, VTB, in which Demchenko took out a loan, offered the borrower new options for paying the mortgage. It is not yet clear how the situation will develop further.

Such cases are multiplying throughout the country. Citizens collectively owe banks 9.77 trillion rubles for mortgages. To understand how large this amount is, let's compare it with the indicators of the Russian budget for 2021. This amount is half of all the country's income . The state will spend the same amount on the entire social sphere and all pensions this year. As of 2019, 17 million people pay mortgages, which in this case is equal to the number of households. 37% of them consider themselves to be in the group with incomes below the average. Russians try to pay their mortgages on time. As of the end of 2020, less than one percent of mortgage loans were overdue, but it grew by 35% and amounted to 80 billion rubles. If the disposable income of the population fell again, this means that the poorest will have even less money to pay off their mortgages.

Banks, hiding behind the law and bailiffs, can deny citizens a mortgage vacation, but if the situation worsens and citizens find it harder to pay, banks will have to negotiate with debtors. The special credit holidays introduced by President Putin during the pandemic ended a month ago. In any case, they can be used only once during the duration of the mortgage. With falling income, vacations will not save you.

However, the preferential mortgage program continues. New applicants are attracted with preferential loans, the construction market rejoices in new square meters. The banks happily joined the People-New Oil program. The mortgage loan from VTB, the second most important player in the lending market, has almost quadrupled since 2014. Alfa-Bank in 2018 occupied a modest 31st place, after 3 years it is already in 7th in terms of mortgage lending. This shows how profitable the mortgage business is for banks. After all, there are no very big risks for them. Not only that, the entire legal system protects first banks, and then, in rare cases, citizens. The structure of mortgage payments is such that borrowers pay first all bank interest, and only then the cost of the apartment itself. This means that banks first earn their money, and then, in case citizens stumble and cannot repay the loan, they have an apartment in their hands, which the bank can always sell. The risk of being left without earnings is practically zero. In a difficult economic situation, banks could take on some of the risks. We could. But they don't want to. And why - everything is according to the law.