“Facing repossession can be a daunting time in one’s life. As daunting as it is, it needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. It go’s without saying that a situation of this severity will not simply vanish into thin air if ignored by the home owner. Unfortunately many home owners do have this attitude while selling property as they simply do not know how to deal with the situation and believe that they are doomed no matter what they do. It can be an extremely emotional time in ones life and can put a lot of pressure on the home owners personal life, as well their health. However, it need not necessarily be this way.
House auction concept shot with a sign, home and gavel
House Repossession In South Africa
An important thing to remember is that there is no reason to be ashamed of your situation if you’re facing repossession. These things happen in life and often the cause is due to no fault of our own. Rather than groveling and feeling sorry for one’s self, the best thing to do in a situation like this is to take action, immediate action.
Most home owners simply give up and hand the keys over to the bank, this submission can have negative consequences down the line such as receiving a bad credit record and having their name black-listed. Once a home owner receives a bad credit record or black-listing, they are normally banned from the lending industry for the next 5 to 10 years. This means that they will even find it difficult to rent a property in future because the majority of landlords do credit checks on their prospective tenants. Not only will the home owner find it difficult to rent a property in future, but they will be declined for basically any type of credit application that they apply for. This includes things like credit cards, cellphone contracts, store/shopping accounts etc.
Having said the above the news is not all bad. There are steps one is able to take in order to prevent the actual repossession from taking place, and if not preventing it completely, then at least soften the blow and improve the situation greatly.
The following actions could and should be taken and would help the home owners situation dramatically:
– Contact the bank immediately and let them know of your situation, they will respect you for this and follow a more lenient and understanding approach from their side.
– Negotiate a ‘holiday’ period. This is normally a 3-6 month period whereby you do not have to pay any installments. This basically gives you time to sort your financial situation out with the hopes that you’ll be back on your feet by the time the holiday period is up.
– Negotiate a longer bond term. If you are currently paying your bond over 20 years, one could arrange to change the bond term to 30 yrs, this will decrease your bond payments to a small degree on a monthly basis.
Then last but not least, there are fortunately people out there who specialize in helping distressed home owners out of their situation when all else fails. These companies are usually property investors who buy houses for cash and are able to provide home owners with a quick property sale on the spot before the banks manage to step in and proceed to repossess the property. These property investors might not necessarily offer full market value for the property, but instead will offer up to 70% of the market value for an instant and guaranteed sale. This can be the answer to solving the home owner’s problem very quickly because these investors who buy houses for cash usually understand how the banks work and are able to speak to the bank on the home owners behalf. At the end of the day it is a win win situation whereby the home owners is helped out of their problematic situation, their credit record is saved, their bond is settled and they can carry on with their lives. These property investors will even allow the home owner to rent the property back after the sale which can be extremely helpful if the home owner wishes to remain in the property.
I’m sure you will agree this is a far better solution than sitting around and waiting for the banks to swoop in and take everything the home owner owns leaving them with absolutely nothing but a bad credit record at the end of the day. Note that it is vitally important that if the home owner decides to go this route that they contact such a repossession company as soon as possible before it is too late. One such company which specializes in this is Easy Home Sales.” Easy home sales are repossession specialists and are able to prevent the repossession of your home by providing you with an instant and guaranteed home sale.
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Dale Purdon, director and founder of IMAGINE Properties, Easy Home Sales any many more. Prior to setting up IMAGINE, Dale set out to build his own property portfolio in South Africa where he focused on acquiring high yielding rental properties in the lower end market and gained extensive experience in stock-sourcing as well as portfolio management.