It has long been standard practice for creditors to require of a debtor who owns property and who enters into an Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVA) with them that he or she should take steps to release some part or even all of the equity in that property and to contribute all or some of the proceeds into the IVA. The debtor may already have anticipated that creditors would insist on this being done and may have already addressed any equity in their property in their IVA proposal. One of the benefits of an IVA from the debtor’s perspective is that the debtor does not usually lose their home provided that they can address the equity appropriately and to the satisfaction of their unsecured creditors. In Bankruptcy loss of the debtor’s home is almost inevitable if there is any realisable equity therein.
