Crikey Dick mate, we’re not here to be reasonable

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I have over the past 6 months had an extraordinary amount of contact with all the major banks in New Zealand as I work through trying to keep people afloat.  In the main the banks have been wonderful.  There are a large number of people in trouble here and so any heavy handedness by the banks is only going to create bad press for them and more importantly, further damage the property market by flooding it with more mortgagee sales.

One of the “bank owned non banks” however has been quite different.  They are run and managed from Australia so the NZ office is simply a paper shuffling department.  Recently we had a property for sale which managed to get a cash offer for the same amount that the current owner had paid for it.  In other words this offer would clear the mortgage and reduce further debt to the bank.

To get the Aussies permission we had to get a valuation done from a list supplied by the bank. Not one name on the list was a company that knew the area well necessarily so one just had to pick one out of the hat as it were.

So the valuation comes back at full retail price in a good market, nothing to do with the current carnage going on in the country.  So because the offer isn’t up to the valuation they won’t let the owner sell.  Given that the offer is 10K more than the agent thought they would get and that the alternative is mortgagee for the owner this is ridiculous behaviour from this bank.  Instead of improving their clients and their own position they will probably end up with a deficit.

This is the downside of multi-nationals who haven’t embraced corporate empathy into their businesses.

It shows the difficulty of an offshore decision maker.  Things aren’t bad in Aussie yet so they can’t see why this is an acceptable deal here.

There’s another scary thing the banks are up to that is the subject of a special report I am sending out tomorrow, keep an eye out in your inbox if you subscribe to me newsletter of get subscribed HERE today to make sure you receive it.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv