Penalty Interest Complaint

I just got a phone call from Westpac in regards to my complaint about the penalty interest I was charged by the developer.

She needs to investigate it all properly (as expected) but she can see that the bank did make an error with my name and that if it is what's caused the penalties then she said that from what she can see then there shouldn't be any problems in being reimbursed. I also asked about interest on the amount and she will consider that too.

I also mentioned what my solicitor said about the worst settlement she has ever worked on! I did say that I wasn't really sure where the problem was though, if it was the bank or the mortgage broker, but either way being told it would take only 2 weeks and then taking almost 8 was frustrating and stressful, not to mention costly with the extra rent that will cause me to pay.

She seemed very disappointed about my poor experience with the bank and even mentioned that she may speak to the mortgage brokers as essentially they are their employees in a way.

In the email I sent her, I also included information about my surprise of needing to make up the loan shortfall at land settlement as my mortgage broker had told me a few times that the shortfall would come off the final payment to the builder... I also mentioned the shortfall was due to the LMI amount increasing from when the pre-approval was given to when the unconditional was given.

Land settlement is done!

I got a phone call today at ~2:50pm from my solicitor and as soon as I saw her name I started to panic - 10 minutes before settlement was due to happen! Gah!

However it was all good :D It went through early!

Yes, I now own my land and can progress forwards with it all! Ok so the bank owns it, but you know what I mean!

Wow!!

Do I believe it?

Firstly, I have a settlement time and date for 3pm tomorrow, but I wont believe it until it actually happens.

I feel physically ill.

This morning, after calling my mortgage broker an hour ago for an update, to not have one, an hour later I got a call back from her. Evidently my file is currently being looked at by someone in Westpac and providing nothing else is required, tomorrow morning it should be fine for settlement and that I need to call my solicitor to get her to call them in the morning and arrange a time for it to happen tomorrow.

I call my solicitor, she isn't impressed. She said that if that is the case there is no way that settlement will happen tomorrow, it's not enough notice as the bank is in Adelaide and not Melbourne. She is going to call this afternoon and see if she can find out anything.

Meanwhile my solicitor also tells me that she is sick as a dog and her Dr is telling her to rest and threatening her will hospitalisation due to pneumonia if she doesn't rest.

There is also a shortfall that needs to be paid tomorrow. My mortgage broker has been telling me the whole time that the shortfall will be at the end... umm no, it's now needed tomorrow for settlement.

I've had to go to my local branch, fill in some paperwork to authorise the bank to withdraw the shortfall of funds from my Westpac account. The problem with that is that I only have $4 in there as I haven't started using it and because I haven't started using it, it isn't connected to my ING Direct bank account which is where my savings is.

I've logged in and transferred the money to my Bendigo Bank account, so it will be there in the morning, then tomorrow I need to get to the Bendigo Branch to withdraw said cash, then drive to the Westpac branch and deposit the cash before they try to withdraw it for the settlement.

My solicitor said to me today that in her 15 years of doing this, she has never encountered a settlement like this before - so disorganised and they just seem to not care about their clients. She is disgusted about how this has been handled... which explains why she has had enough! She seriously can't believe it. In a way I'm glad that is not normal, but so annoyed it's happened to me.

I am so ill it's not funny.

Hrmm

Still no settlement date

Shit!

Complaint lodged with Westpac

I followed up with my broker yesterday about the complaint in regards to the penalty interest and after a few phone calls, I need to contact the mortgage centre myself.
So I have called the number my broker gave me and have lodged a complaint. He tried to tell me that my mortgage broker requested the change... ? I don't believe it. I re-stated to him that all my notorised documentation as well as all my land and building contracts all have my middle name, so it is the banks fault.

The complaints area will take 3 days to acknowledge receipt of the complaint and then a further 7-10 days to look into it.

I'm so angry and annoyed with Westpac, but yet everyone I have dealt with directly at Westpac has been really great which makes it a really odd situation.

I can also confirm that the new documents were received yesterday in Adelaide and my broker has told me that she has escalated it to get settlement ASAP. Hopefully I know more this afternoon.

Oh, and I went past the block on the weekend and I have a lot number sign with a sold sticker! It made me really excited about -something- happening and then I got all sad again cos it's still not officially mine yet...

Amazing!

I signed my new loan doc's yesterday up in Sydney. The paperwork was actually correct in that they had my middle name on everything. My gawd, something went right!

Still no word from my mortgage broker about making Westpac pay the penalty interest but I have had some advise from the good people on H1 and have a path to follow before I lodge anything with the Financial Ombudsman.

I'm so down about it all and just so meh towards the whole building process right now. Screw you Westpac for making me feel like this.

And it just gets worse

It gets worse... I just got the below email from my solicitor. I have forwarded it onto my mortgage broker and she is going to investigate and raise it with her manager and see what can be done about it.

I have advised the Developer of the delay due to the Bank having to redo mortgage documents.

They have advised that they will be charging penalty interest for late settlement. So if settlement takes place on the 14th May, 2009 then penalty interest will come to $547.15. They had previously granted us an extension of the settlement date penalty interest, but now they are insisting on penalty interest.


I can understand why the developer has done this seeing as though this is now the third time that settlement has had to be changed due to the bank, but I do not wish to be paying this on top of the extra month or so in rent that I'm already having to pay due to the bank taking so long and making an error on the printing of my name.

The developer could have done worse than charge me interest too, but thankfully they haven't

I think I'm now beyond angry

Angry with the bank

Well my loan documents are not at my local branch ready for me to sign. This means that I can't sign them until Monday.... assuming that they get there in time, at this rate who the hell even knows!?!?

-sigh- I'm so angry. So so Angry

This means settlement could end up being 2 weeks away. This all add's up to extra money coming out of my pocket! Extra rent money that I really don't want to be paying because the bank stuffed up!

Not good enough Westpac!

Bank error, not in my favour

Update - doc's wont be ready for signing today so my land settlement has to be delayed due to their stuff up.
Hopefully the new docs will be ready tomorrow, if not then they wont be getting signed until Monday as I will be out of the state for work.

This could impact my site start of May sometime -sigh- I'm really very angry right now :(

What's in a name?

-sigh-

Land settlement might not be tomorrow :(

The bank in all their wisdom decided to drop my middle name off my loan and mortgage documents. For what reason we do not know, but all other documentation (land and building contracts etc etc) all have my full name so the problem is clearly with the bank.

As a result, I need to sign all new documents at the bank -grrr- Due to it being the fault of the bank, my mortgage broker has escalated it with their company's manager contact at Westpac and hopefully this means the documents will be ready to sign at my local branch this afternoon. She is also asking that, due to it being their fault, they go ahead with settlement tomorrow as scheduled based on a faxed copy of my documents knowing that the signed documents will be on their way.

Obviously this being discovered the day before scheduled settlement isn't ideal and combine that with the fact that I am in Sydney Wednesday to Friday this week, it's really far from great.

I'm guessing it's due to my existing account with them (car loan) doesn't have my middle name.

Lets see what happens.

Not yet confirmed

I emailed my solicitor this afternoon to see if she had heard anything yet about the settlement, she hadn't. She said she waited on hold to the bank for 45 minutes to be told that they have my signed docs but are yet to process them as they haven't had time. She tried to get it escalated but but they said that could only be done by the mortgage broker. So I then called my mortgage broker and sent her my solicitors email. She explained that with the workload, they would be dealing with the ones scheduled for tomorrow and Monday and then Tuesday... She replied a few hours later to say that its been escalated and should still be fine for Tuesday 05/05. Lets hope so :)

waiting for settlment time and date

On Tuesday when I dropped some paperwork off at my solicitors, she said that Thursday (today) I should know the definite date and time of my land settlement.... -waits-

In other news, my dad -finally- got the title to his land yesterday in Riverdale! I think they originally bought it in maybe July or something last year and have only now got the titles which were originally meant to come through in December! YaY! He can start building now and will hopefully be in by Christmas!

All signed... not yet delivered

Yesterday I went to the bank and signed my loan documents to accept their offer and signed the mortgage documents!! Wow! At the time I was just signing yet more doco's but this morning I am realising how big a moment it is to sign my first home loan and mortgage documents! :D :D Heh, cool!

How very adult of me... sure I'm 31 so I'm technically an adult, but this is a very adult type thing to do, the most adult type things I've done.

I'm also going to move all my banking over to Westpac as they can give me fee free accounts so I figure why not have it all in the one place. It's going to be a bit of a PITA moving all my direct debits, but if I am saving $5-10 a month in fees between two bank accounts then it will be worthwhile.

Possible start date

I just got onto N my CSC and she has been off sick for almost a week! Poor thing :( She didn't sound too good either.

She explained the process a bit more for me. They don't get the permits and the DA approval until about a week after land settlement and they don't order the final working drawings until they receive this, so me waiting for all this to be done sooner rather than later hasn't been worthwhile.

So I have more of an idea of time lines etc now. As settlement is on Tuesday 5th of May, once she has confirmation of that from my solicitor, she will send the file off to the construction area and from there they normally take two weeks to get onto site and their work weeks are Friday to Friday, so I could have a start date of May 22nd!

I've read my loan documents and have a few questions, so I called the bank to make a signing appointment but they told me I need to raise these questions with my mortgage broker - I hope this doesn't cause a delay. Things that are wrong are different LMI value to my original sheet, not the latest interest rate and stamp duty looks to have been calculated on the entire loan amount and not the land value which is a difference of about $12k!

I have the loan papers

It's real, I really have the bank approval for the whole amount - I have it in writing now! :D

I have unconditional approval!

Yes, that's right! I just got a call from my broker telling me that I have unconditional approval for the full amount!! :D :D :D

Settlement will be on May 5th

It hasn't sunk in yet, might not for a bit but I think I'm also still in shock my broker actually called me ;)

YaY!!!

I can stop being all negative about it all now!

I can't do this for much longer

As I mentioned in a comment here they still don't have an answer for me.

They just don't get what this kind of stress does to someone. I can't even eat or concentrate on my job properly and whenever I think about it I honestly feel like I am going to cry - THIS IS STUPID!! Oh and PMS probably isn't helping either.

I know that there are going to be a lot of stressful times during the build, but if the bank doesn't say yes then there is no build - FFS just hurry up

I hope today is better

Yesterday I emailed my mortgage broker to ask if she had heard anything... I didn't get a reply to my email so at about 3pm I decided to call her. She finished with the company on Friday. Why she didn't tell me this I don't know. Immediately a heap of negative thoughts started going through my head - what if the information about the valuation is wrong and she lied? What if it isn't up to where she has told me it's at? I hear all these stories about other people's mortgage brokers doing such a shitty job that I started to really panic and really stress about it - a lot! I waited on hold for over 30 minutes to speak to her supervisor who has taken over her customers until they get someone else in and she said 'according to your file....' well what if what's she's written on my file is wrong?

Gah!

Anyway, 'according to my file' they are expecting an answer today. So hopefully not much longer to worry and stress about everything finance related.

I also got attitude yesterday from my solicitor for requiring another extension on the finance clause on my land... well I'm sorry that the bank is taking its sweet time, but that's not my fault, please don't give me attitude :(

I also called my real estate agent yesterday to ask if the landlord would consider a increase of only $20 a week considering I plan to move out later in the year... I also didn't realise but I'm actually only (hah!) paying $280 p/w and not the $285 p/w which means that my increase is $40 p/w! My property manager wasn't in but I spoke to another one who said she would pass it on to him today - lets see what the outcome is

New valuation amount!

My mortgage broker just called me and informed me that the reason she didn't have any update yesterday is because the bank just called her this morning and they have re-evaluated my loan and they have now decided to give me the whole amount so my aircon is now fully included! :D

I still don't have my final unconditional approval go ahead thingy, but hopefully Monday! Unfortunately this means extending the finance on my land again, but that's ok!

Not yet

Still nothing from the bank....

Tomorrow hopefully!

I contacted my Mortgage Broker today and evidently tomorrow is the day I should find out from the bank! How exciting!

Although I also contacted my solicitor and the finance clause on my land is now 17th April, 2009 and as it would seem extremely unlikely that the Bank would manage to get everything arranged for the 24th April, 2009 she also requested an extension of the settlement date (which has been accepted) until the 5th May, 2009.

If it comes back as OK tomorrow I wonder if settlement can be brought back again?

Storage solutions needed

I don't know how to setup a house. I know where I want furniture, but I don't know how to do things like storage and organisation... seriously! I've always lived in share houses and even though I currently live alone I moved in here with someone else and never really re-arranged anything after she moved out.

It's hard to explain what I mean but I spose I just mean that I'm not good at storage solutions - where do people store old magazines they want to keep? Where do people put things that I normally just leave on the coffee table, things that I like to have on hand but really should put away somewhere so my lounge room doesn't look so messy!?!? Maybe I'm just lazy or maybe it jsut comes down to the fact that the rental properties I've always lived in just don't have any real storage. I am going to have to become very familiar with the Store storage shop in Epping and Ikea's storage solutions to avoid having this clutter and mess around the place.

A good place for me to start will be to have a cork board somewhere that I can pin stuff up instead of having bits of paper all over the place... I'm actually thinking of maybe making half my pantry door cork and the other half black board - who knows if I will though!

Unofficial

I've had to apply for a 5 day extension to my finance clause for my land as the file is back with credit to get all the boxes ticked. My broker has all the results and was telling me that it's all fine but they just don't have the actual official approval yet and it's going to be about 4 days.

My valuation came back short by about $3k which while frustrating, can be for the heater/aircon and not a major issue, I can get a cheaper one if I want (I put in the higher quote) OR I can use my savings which more than covers it, so while good to have that answer, it's a bit frustrating.

I also got a registered letter notification in the snail mail today... my rent is being increased from June 12th to $1387 from $1214 which is almost a 15% increase.... decision time has come - challenge it or move.

Still no word

So the finance clause expires today and as of yesterday the valuation had been done but it had to go back to credit to finalise everything. I don't know the outcome of the valuation as yet, hopefully I find out today.
My broker assured me that to organise an extension on the finance is as easy as making a phone call or sending an email/letter and that it wont be a problem to do if we don't have the answer today.

I really hope I find out today though, I don't want to have any delays and I just want to know! But to be honest, between work and cycling club commitments, I'm really exhausted and almost don't have the brain bandwidth to even worry think about this today.

Unimpressed

No word from my mortgage broker today. I called her at 3pm for an update and she said she was yet to get to my file in her pile to get to today but would call me. No call, no email NOT impressed.

I will be sending her an email first thing in the morning and sending another one to my solicitor to let her know the current status. Thankfully I worded my solicitor up last week about a possible delay.

-sigh-

It could be all fine but I just don't know that!

Getting close now

Today I should find out if I need to extend the finance clause on my land beyond the 8th April (Wednesday) So in theory, today I could find out if the valuation has come back as OK!

Getting nervous now!

Really looking forward to it

The more I think about it the more excited I get about moving out to Mernda. Sure, it will be the furthest from the city I have ever lived, but I love that part of the world. Growing up in Greensborough/Montmorency area's I always loved the country of Whittlesea, Diamond Creek and Hurstbridge area's and as a kid we used to have picnics at the Yan Yean Reservoir and soon I will be living about 5km's from it! :D

The other good thing is that while I am moving out there and I'm going to love it, I will still be heading towards the city for work (Richmond) which makes it the best of both worlds really, city and country :D I'm also _really_ happy about the location of my block in the estate. I am pretty much on the edge and so while it will be suburbia I will also still be surrounded by farm land :D

Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show

Today I headed into the city to go to the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show to try to get some idea's for my future garden - sooo much to see and I pretty much just browsed my way through w/out spending a lot of time looking at product stalls and I was there for 2 hrs. I didn't want to buy anything now as I don't really know what I want/need and why buy stuff that I will just have to move!

Photo time!!

Lots of these on show:


I like the little sunflowers and the rows in a round container:


A combination of the above two:


I liked how full this looked with all the veges but I think they are all in their own pots :(




I thought this one (as pictured by someone else too) looked great with the rocks


Lots of places were selling these tank garden beds


I really liked how the rocks bordered the path and the garden




I liked the colour combination of this one:


Another kind of pathway option


Another pathway and tyres being used to put plants in


Veges surrounded by hay or sugar cane bales


I really liked this plant


I liked this idea for putting plants on a wall


I liked this path combined with the tank beds


I wonder how long it would take me to drink enough to build my own wall like this? ;)

Bank needs more information

I just got a call from my Mortgage Broker and the bank requires a letter from my real estate agent stating when I started renting the property I am currently in and how much I currently pay. Evidently the 12 month statement I organised wasn't enough - what a PITA. I hope this doesn't delay anything too much as D-Day is Wednesday!

I did panic at first when she called as my first thoughts were that the valuation had come back under what I need.

At least I know that they are working on it :)

Bugger!

I currently live in the rear unit of a block of 3 units which are all owned by the same people. My unit is a VERY small 3 bedroom unit which was freshly painted when I moved in and a brand new kitchen and split system airconditioner. My rent is currently $285 p/w.
Unit 2 is an even smaller unit which is only 2 bedrooms, old original kitchen and old aircon. Unit 2 is currently up for rent at the whopping price of $320 p/w - yes, a massive $35 a week MORE for a crappier smaller unit! I seriously can't see how anyone would pay that amount for that unit!

FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!

I would say that there are very good odds of my rent going up soon by the looks which really sucks when soon I am also going to be paying off a mortgage and paying rent :( If my rent went up to $320 p/w that would increase my rent by $250 a month which is almost a 25% increase - can they even do that?

And again, FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!