I was lucky enough to be involved with a really cool experience recently. It will show you why we love our work so much here at Summit Mortgages, as well as the challenges we often face when working to get approval for our clients. This story will also hopefully shine a bit of a positive light on a sometimes gloomy looking time in the property market for many.
A married couple in their 50’s called me wanting some guidance around the possibility of buying a home. Although they had previously owned their own home, they had been renting for a while. After being forced to move from their previous rental (due to their landlords plans) they decided they needed to get back on the property ladder. Following that initial phone call , I sent an email requesting the documents I required to move their home-owning dream forward. After conducting a full analysis of their situation, I found they were in a position to be considered for a First Home Loan through Kainga Ora.
If you’ve been keeping up to date with our newsletters, you may already know a bit about the First Home Loan, but if not you can read about it here.
At first glance, you could easily have read through the criteria and come to the conclusion that these clients didn’t qualify. But, after doing some extra reading on the ins and outs of the criteria and contacting some friendly people in the right places (the old ‘its not what you know its who you know’ trick), I was excited to discover that they did meet the requirements, but there was one key area that was technically outside of the criteria, but only just. After discussing this with my clients and chatting through our options, I suggested that we put forward an application with a really strong plan and mitigants which I hoped would have the lender and Kainga Ora see the whole situation for its merits and give us an approval. But unfortunately it wasn’t to be (yet). I had a phone call from the lender outlining that our application met criteria with them but Kainga Ora had declined it. The really interesting thing was that it was declined not because of what we had identified as our challenge, they were actually happy with that, it was around something that no criteria guideline is actually outlined anywhere and is considered on a case by case basis.
Now knowing the client’s situation as well as I did, I was able to think strategically and come up with two possible solutions that I thought could make it work. When I suggested these to the lender, they said they would get back in touch with Kainga Ora to see whether either of those solutions would work. After a couple of days of patiently waiting (if you can call me contacting the lender everyday hoping for an update patient!) I was pleasantly surprised to return to my computer from my break one afternoon to find an approval for our purchase! As you can imagine, I was so happy to have got this across the line for my clients. This is one of the many reasons why I love what I do. But the best part was yet to come, the part where I get to call the clients and tell them the amazing news. Hearing the client’s voice trembling and breaking up as they explained to me how much this approval meant to them and how they had been talking about what retirement might look like if they are still renting gave me a feeling that I had really helped improve my clients lives. I work from home alot and my 8 year old daughter overheard me delivering the fantastic news to my clients and when I got off the call I must have been visibly happy because she asked “why are you so excited Dad?” and when I told her why she replied “it must be really cool to help people like that” and she couldn’t be more right!
There is ALOT of work that goes on behind the scenes that our clients won’t ever see, so getting wins like this makes all that hard work worth it and it reminds us why we love our jobs. The First Home Loan is a really valuable tool we have to help us make our clients dreams come true.
If you would like to talk to one of our advisors about the First Home Loan or getting into the right position to be considered for a mortgage, give us a call.
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