Michael Budge

I had a lady call me to say that her Bank had given she and her husband and their 3 teenage children 30 days to vacate their property. The husband was involved in an accident at work (he fell off a fork lift!) and had not worked for long time. There were other issues as well and all this had resulted in them getting so far behind with their mortgage that the bank had no option to ask them to vacate the premises and the house would be sold. Their repayment history was poor and they also had $87,000 worth of non-mortgage debt which included Credit Cards, Council Rates and School Fees. They had given all their information to another broker 6 months previously and he had done nothing with the file! I negotiated a further 30 day extension to the Notice to Vacate with their existing bank and approached a Debt Negotiator to see if she could assist in reducing the debt. She was very successful and managed to reduce the outstanding debt from $87,000 to $37,000. I approached a non-conforming lender, one who could refinance the reduced non-mortgage debt and their existing mortgage into a new home loan. The client needed an 85% LVR to accommodate this. Fortunately both applicants were long-term employees of their respective employers and this added weight to their application. When I advised the client that her application had been approved, she burst into tears on the phone because a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She said that all they wanted to do was to stay in the house. I said that they key to staying in the house was to pay the mortgage on time and I organised the refinance settlement to coincide with the day the husband was paid so that the first call on his pay packet was the mortgage payment! Morale of the story – things are never so bad that they can’t be fixed. All you have to do is find the solution!