Last October we were introduced to a Melb based mortgage broker by our family solicitor, who now honestly regrets having done it, but who at least will assist in the impending loss recovery.
Original deal was to look at refinancing of our existing residential loans, being more than one million with one major bank (big 4) at already good rates, (a further one million positive equity was available) plus another million or so in new finance for some acquisitions and building projects, total nearly three million dollars.
Things went bad nearly from the start, broker repeatedly lost documents sent, no communication, no loan offers to evaluate, all this despite repeated requests from us for progress reports. But we were continually assured to hold on, things were coming, and don't apply to other lenders because it would show in our Baycorp file and prejudice their supposed efforts.
Then they shut down for Christmas, their staff broker disappeared until late January, impending settlement of new property to occur early Feb, which didn't happen, and we went into breach of contract for over 400k. Nearly three weeks after settlement date, was presented by broker with loan contract being only an incomplete amount and at way high rate from 2nd tier bank, _plus_ a loan shark short term paper for the balance at credit card rates, from their own firms other investors!!!! No choice, sign it or else lose deposit on property plus face default damages costs. Make a long story short, six months from contact they have not performed, have incurred considerable holding costs/penalties plus six figure loss of income from unstarted projects. Guess we were a bit lucky in having documentation and corroboration for all this, makes proving our case easier, but if it happened to us it could be happening to lots of families out there on a smaller scale. The government needs to act now to clean up this industry and get some professionalism into it, from anecdotal comments received there doesn't seem to be many good brokers around.
Original deal was to look at refinancing of our existing residential loans, being more than one million with one major bank (big 4) at already good rates, (a further one million positive equity was available) plus another million or so in new finance for some acquisitions and building projects, total nearly three million dollars.
Things went bad nearly from the start, broker repeatedly lost documents sent, no communication, no loan offers to evaluate, all this despite repeated requests from us for progress reports. But we were continually assured to hold on, things were coming, and don't apply to other lenders because it would show in our Baycorp file and prejudice their supposed efforts.
Then they shut down for Christmas, their staff broker disappeared until late January, impending settlement of new property to occur early Feb, which didn't happen, and we went into breach of contract for over 400k. Nearly three weeks after settlement date, was presented by broker with loan contract being only an incomplete amount and at way high rate from 2nd tier bank, _plus_ a loan shark short term paper for the balance at credit card rates, from their own firms other investors!!!! No choice, sign it or else lose deposit on property plus face default damages costs. Make a long story short, six months from contact they have not performed, have incurred considerable holding costs/penalties plus six figure loss of income from unstarted projects. Guess we were a bit lucky in having documentation and corroboration for all this, makes proving our case easier, but if it happened to us it could be happening to lots of families out there on a smaller scale. The government needs to act now to clean up this industry and get some professionalism into it, from anecdotal comments received there doesn't seem to be many good brokers around.
