Dick and Jane Nutt have a shared appreciation mortgage

We've been asked by more viewers to highlight the plight of homeowners with shared appreciation mortgages.

These were sold in the late 1990s. Banks lent the money but didn't ask for any interest or repayments -- instead they took a share of any increase in the value of the property.

That now looks likea canny move on the part of the banks, because house prices have soared.

Dick and Jane Nutt thought they were onto a good thing when they took out a shared apprieciation mortgage with the Bank of Scotland in 1997, because there was no monthly cost involved.

Recently they've calculated how much they'd have to pay the bank if they sold their house, and it's a frightening figure.

Dick says it gets more and more all the time "The value of the house goes up and up and it gets and the figure gets bigger and that makes it difficult to do anything about it"

When the Nutts started their shared appreciation mortgage, their house was worth �300,000 and they borrowed �35,000, agreeing that the Bank of Scotland would get just over a third of any increase in the house's value.

Since then the price of the house has more than doubled to around �650,000, so the Nutts have calculated that if they sold up they would have to pay the bank �129,000.

They had planned to trade down to a smaller house but the mortgage is stopping them.

We need a vast amount of money to pay off this huge loan Derek Nutt

Derek adds "It's very difficult to do anything about it because you have to get a vast amount of money to pay off this huge loan and that makes it more difficult to move."

We first highlighted this problem more than a year and a half ago, when Harold Fisher, another Working Lunch viewer, told a similar story -- he's involved with an action group for the victims, called SAMVIC, which is considering legal action against the banks involved.

We strongly recommended that potential applicants sought independent financial advice Bank of Scotland statement

On Dick and Jane Nutt case, Bank of Scotland told us "We strongly recommended that potential applicants sought independent financial advice .. the applicant's solicitors were directed by the bank to draw the applicant's specific attention to the fact that the monies secured by the mortgage included the Shared Appreciation Percentage"

Dick admits that the mortgage was a gamble, and they could have ended up with a winner if house prices hadn't risen so far.

On the other hand the mortgages exposed customers to a huge potential liability, one which many simply couldn't foresee.