Kiwis often don’t know where to get help dealing with mortgage arrears.
They are told to speak to their banks, but do not feel comfortable dealing with some credit person that is hidden behind an email address of 0800 number.
It’s difficult to know what the banks credit people or hardship teams will do.
Understanding Mortgage Arrears
As non bank brokers we often speak to people with mortgage arrears and they are often distraught after trying to deal with the banks.
They have been told to speak to their bank at the first chance, and expected the bank to take an understanding approach and help resolve the problem.
Often the mortgage may only be a little in arrears and with some help the account could be brought up to date again in a reasonable time-frame; however instead of taking a reasonable stance the banks tend to offer unrealistic plans to catch up on the arrears while charging penalty interest.
When dealing with mortgage arrears the bank should look at ways to help you get back on track, but too often they don’t seem to want to help. They just want you to catch up as quickly as possible while they are not prepared to help with changing the loan term or looking at other ways to lower the repayments.
The key thing that needs to happen as soon as possible is to make a plan.
You need to accept the problem and then make a plan on how to get your mortgage repayments back up to date and therefore avoid problems with your bank and any possible mortgage rescue being needed as they can be costly.
How A Non Bank Broker Can Help
You may think that the best way to approach mortgage arrears is to go and talk to your bank.
That can work in some cases and in other cases it can open a can of worms and cause undue stress.
Often the best approach is to speak to someone that understands what the banks expect, and can help you devise a plan that will get you back on track or one that the bank will accept.
The best advise is to act early.
In many cases we have helped people dealing with mortgage arrears by simply restructuring their existing loans or by raising a small personal loan or second mortgage so they can get the mortgage up to date, to get out of paying the crippling penalty interest and creating a planned approach to get back on track over time.
Dealing with mortgage arrears can be stressful on your own, so we encourage you to have a chat and see how we can help.
