We are both very disappointed.
We spent Friday, which should have been our moving day, surrounded by boxes, not sure whether to confirm or cancel the rental van and the cleaner, making and receiving calls to and from conveyancers, builders, banks and generally being in a state of chaos.
What happened? I’m not really sure where to begin, to be honest. My brain feels like it has been pickled and fried.
Last week it became apparent that we had not put enough money by for buying the house. There had been various fees and charges we had not been expecting. We scraped together the extra money, almost another $7000, and thought we had managed to avoid disaster.
The settlement day was Friday 21st. On Thursday, the bank attempted to take the deposit. They requested about $9000 more than we had been expecting.
Apparently the deficit was due to the mortgage insurance fee, that they tried to request as a lump sum.
We had went through a mortgage broker. I feel she has poorly advised us throughout the whole process. We were clear and open with regards our finances and what our purchasing power was.
We were never informed of the fees we discovered last week. And as for the mortgage insurance, we were told it was being rolled into the home loan amount, not to be paid as a lump sum on or before settlement day.
After scraping money together last week, we had no more available funds on which to draw. Therefore buying the house has fell through.
I won’t let it get me down too much. I know we will buy a house at some point. But I am angry that we received, what I believe, was poor advice and guidance. We went through a broker specifically because things are done differently in Australia, and we were relying on the broker’s expertise.
When it became clear we had no more funds and that the purchase was not going to happen, the broker then suggested we apply for an overdraft, a loan and use credit cards to meet the deficit.
In the current economic climate, such poor advice to obtain further debt for a home loan which it seems our finances don’t allow for as it is, seems nonsensical and irresponsible.
I have sought advice from the Credit Ombudsmen Service and have lodged a complaint about the broker. I am not sure what the outcome will be, but I have to declare my discontent with the quality of service I received.
One of the silver linings is that we now have a sum of cash, originally earmarked as the deposit for the house, and we are going to spoil ourselves a little bit.
I have bought a Digital SLR camera today, a fairly high-end one, and may look into carving a new career out of my photography hobby. Let’s turn that frown upside down!
We are also looking at upgrading our car.
We can start saving again next year.
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