The number of mortgagee sales looks to be on the rise – but they are still just a fraction of the total market, experts say.<\/p>\n
A mortgagee sale happens when a homeowner does not meet their mortgage repayments, so the property must be sold to repay the debt owed to the bank.<\/p>\n
TradeMe currently has 65 residential properties listed as mortgagee sales, which is 35 percent up on the same time last year.<\/p>\n
But the site’s property sales director Gavin Lloyd said that number was “quite small” – less than one percent of TradeMe’s more than 42,000 property listings.<\/p>\n
“In the market overall we are seeing\u00a0properties generally taking longer to sell<\/a>\u00a0so this could also be contributing to the number of mortgagee listings increasing.<\/p>\n “We know it’s a tough time with the rising cost of living and interest rates taking its toll on homeowners, however mortgagee sales are often a last resort so some sellers may also look to proactively list their properties before they are required to by lenders.”<\/p>\n In Wellington, Bayleys regional general manager Grant Henderson said his team would usually appraise up to three properties a year for banks considering mortgagee sales.<\/p>\n But lately, staff were hitting that number each month.<\/p>\n “We’ve got a broad range, from developers who’ve found themselves in a sticky situation due to funding, we’ve found mums and dads that’ve got themselves just in the wrong situation, but also investors.<\/p>\n “People have probably let it all go too long, and there’s a lot of denial around the situation they’re in.”<\/p>\n Banks did not take such sales lightly, and it was an absolute last resort, he said.<\/p>\n “Based on some of the things we’ve seen, these people have been in financial difficulty for a long time, it’s not just like,\u00a0‘you lost your job last month<\/a>, this month we’re gonna close you down’, this takes a long time for the banks … to get to the point where they have to pull the pin.”<\/p>\n People got plenty of warning and communication from the bank – up to three years’ worth – before they exercise their mortgagee rights and force a sale, said Henderson.<\/p>\n “Most pragmatic and practical mums and dads will get through it, but some people are just in that denial phase,” he said.<\/p>\n Climbing interest rates<\/a>, insurance costs\u00a0and council rates<\/a>\u00a0had been tipping homeowners into difficulty in recent times.<\/p>\n For those reason, an increasing number of mortgagee sales was not surprising, CoreLogic chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said.<\/p>\n But it was “nothing like” the peak in 2009 after the global financial crisis, which was an extraordinary period.<\/p>\n That year, New Zealand saw up to 800 mortgagee sales in a month, compared to 24 in the first quarter of this year, Davidson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The number of mortgagee sales looks to be on the rise – but they are still just a fraction of the total market, experts say. A mortgagee sale happens when a homeowner does not meet their mortgage repayments, so the property must be sold to repay the debt owed to the bank. TradeMe currently has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10598,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596\/revisions\/10598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}