Stop mortgagee sale
Looking for advice to stop a mortgagee sale? Is the bank threatening to sell your home? Or are you falling behind on your home loan repayments. The first step is usually to take action before it gets worse!
Prevent the home from going to mortgagee sale
If a homeowner starts to fall behind on their mortgage repayments, there is a good chance the bank will be sending them letters demanding the money. These letters may suggest that legal action is coming if they do not take steps to rectify or fix the situation. It’s important to act fast to try and prevent legal action before it gets worse.
Life can have its challenging moments, and this means events such as losing a job, a family member, having an illness, or an issue; can start to make a situation more complex and harder to pay the mortgage.
Falling behind on home loan repayments?
It’s important to get help and speak to them to see what can be done, but also very important to get legal advice about a mortgagee sale. Being in arrears with your bank is a serious matter.
- If you don’t pay your mortgage on time, you could be charged default interest
- You may also be charged legal fees or lawyer fees
- There could be additional penalties
- The situation may be harder to control, and can result in losing possession of the home.
You may wish to have a senior legal expert assist you. Sometimes the skill of dealing with the prospect of a mortgagee sale is more complicated than what a regular conveyancing lawyer may deal with.
Mortgage Rescue is not a legal advisor but could put you in touch with one and you can see if they are right for you.
Default interest is very expensive, and can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars. Interest.co.nz also produced a useful article explaining default rates.
Stop the mortgagee sale!
A legal adviser can help you receive useful information about how you could stop or slow down the mortgagee sale process. This can help you with your situation and reduce stress, and could help.
However falling behind on the mortgagee payments and getting closer to mortgagee sale may mean you need to think of urgent alternatives and options. You may wish to talk to us about the finance related options.
Examples:
- You could sell the house and temporarily move back to renting, which would give you time to fix your situation.
- A family member could buy the house off you.
- You could get a break from making repayments, and get a reduction in how much you pay on your mortgage, until things get better.
Why stop it?
You might ask, why stop the mortgagee sale? If the bank tries to sell your house, for starters, you’ll need to almost certainly find somewhere else to live. People will be coming to the house to consider buying it, and this can feel very intrusive.
While banks generally have the duty of care to sell it for the highest possible price, the highest possible price is not actually what it could get from a proper standard real estate sale. Unfortunately New Zealanders have experienced stories where if the bank had tried to sell their home, it sold for considerably less than what it was worth! This might mean that you end up in a big loss, or could potentially get bankrupted.
The NZ Herald also reports there being a heartache in selling such homes during a mortgagee sale.
How to stop a mortgagee sale?
There is no guarantee that you can ‘stop’ the mortgagee sale, however the chances of doing so can be of some existence if you promptly engage a quality lawyer and potentially a financing option. Act fast and provide the relevant information to help expedite the process.
The longer you take, the harder the situation can become to control. You may lose possession of your home, and thus also lose the ability to rectify the issue.