If you are made redundant, you may be worried about getting into arrears with your mortgage or other loans secured on your home. The advice on this page might help you avoid this.

Contact your lender as soon as you can and explain your situation.

Your lender may allow you to:

• take a payment holiday –  pay less, or nothing at all, for a short period and catch up later
• consolidate any arrears – add the arrears to your mortgage
• extend the term of your mortgage – repaying the mortgage over a longer period which should then reduce the monthly payments
• switch to an interest only-mortgage – this should also reduce your monthly payments, but will not repay the capital, ie the amount you borrowed.

Make sure that you can keep to any agreement you come to with your lender as they are less likely to agree to further changes if you get into arrears again.

Read more about dealing with mortgage arrears.

If you claim certain benefits you may be eligible for help paying your mortgage interest payments, through support for mortgage interest payments (SMI).

SMI is paid as a loan and can help you to pay the interest on your mortgage.

It generally cannot be used to pay off the amount you borrowed (the capital) and so even if you receive SMI it is still very likely that you will have to make some payments towards your mortgage.

If you have been made redundant you may be eligible for benefits.

It is important to claim everything that you are entitled to so that you can make sure you can still pay your housing costs and other priority expenses. Use the entitledto Benefits Calculator to see what benefits you might be able to claim.

You won’t be able to claim housing benefit if you are a homeowner, unless you are in a shared ownership scheme, in which case you can claim housing benefit on any rent you pay.

You may not be eligible for benefits immediately if you have received a redundancy payment or payment in lieu of notice.

After redundancy, you may be entitled to financial support if you have mortgage payment protection insurance. This is usually be for a limited time only. Check your policy details.

Payments from this policy could give you extra time to find another job, sell or rent out your home or come to an arrangement with your lender.

You could rent out a room in your home. You can earn a certain amount from rent without paying tax on it. The money raised may help you with your mortgage costs.

Check with your lender, and ask permission to rent out a room, or you could be breaking the terms of your mortgage agreement.

If you have somewhere else to live, renting out your home could also be an option. You could move somewhere cheaper, and have extra money to help with mortgage costs.

Deciding to sell your home voluntarily could be an option if you cannot afford to keep up with your mortgage payments and things are unlikely to improve in the future.

If you are in negative equity, you still owe money to your mortgage lender after you sell.

Get independent advice from specialist Shelter Cymru debt advisers before making a decision to sell. Click here to find details of the debt advice surgeries nearest to you.

We are sorry that we cannot provide this information in Welsh, however if you would like to speak to an adviser in Welsh please contact 08000 495 495.