Waiting, waiting, waiting..

I’m impatient, waiting annoys me.

We had waited weeks for the quotes from the builders to come in, of 4, 2 have so far quoted, and the trend is looking higher than we anticipated. Looking back, my estimates only included rough figures for removal, and raw material costs, so no labour, no other extras that invariably are required to do the job and do it right.

Once we got the two quotes, it became evident we need more funding, so we sought out our bank for an increase, to which they responded (no kidding, 100% serious), due to CPI increases, they can’t grant us any further credit as we don’t fit the banks lending criteria (in response to borrowing power).

So I ask, what is our borrowing power, and he replies – $149000. This, despite the fact he moments earlier stated we had a mortgage balance owing of $252000. The CBA is suggesting CPI has created this $100000 gap? Idiots. The house itself was recently appraised at $325000, so there’s plenty of room in the ‘resale value’ for any default to be recovered by the bank, and then some.

We had been waiting since Friday for the response ‘within 24 hours’ the online system said, so at this point, I wasn’t in the state of mind to sit and argue with him how absurd his suggestion that CPI is responsible for the $100000 gap in their lending criteria.

I did take a moment to remind him of our redraw balance, and indicated to him that the factual evidence shows the amount required to fulfill the renovations would easily be returned to the bank inside of 18 months to 2 and a half years.

He then proceeded to dribble some scripted garbage that the bank always use in CPI declined applications, and I responded is it your suggestion I take the mortgage, 2 credit cards, and 2 bank accounts to another bank? He told me not to.

Anyway, in the time since the call ended, my partner has been looking into it, and can see a big gap in the borrowing power suggested by CBA, and the borrowing power offered by BankWest, ING, NAB, Westpac and ANZ – all of which gave figures near our current mortgage rate.

The next step is to go in to the bank and see if we can’t talk some sense into them – they’ve got a good set of history data to go off, and crap, the money is going into the house they have mortgaged, it’s pretty secured.

If not, I think I’ll give up waiting, and go have a talk to another bank, I know we can tell CBA to jam it up their arse for $700, the downsides (or possibly upside) is we’d lose the wealth package we have with them, which offers a Credit Card for 55 days interest free, essentially shifting expenses by 55 days, giving us a better mortgage result (in theory, in practice that is probably different – the very card can actually increase your expenses).

This move by CBA is going to delay a lot. We need to get the exterior walls recladded for the solar power and solar hot water setup, we’ve already got both of those ready to go, with Solar Power due to arrange installation in around 4 weeks. The builder has given us a suggestive 6 week lead time, and 1 – 2 weeks to complete the work.

It’s now a matter of getting the dollars there to ensure we can pay the builder, else the whole concept is going to sit on the backburner, with the affected fibro sheets being replaced with new fibro instead (a stop gap measure until the funds fall in for cladding, a waste of money IMO).