THE GREED OF THE BANK

I consider us to be generally lucky people. By us, I mean Michelle and I and by lucky, I mean we lead good lives, are healthy and are surrounded by good friends and family. Now while we are "lucky people" we are not "lucky". Case in point...

As you know, we sold our house. We made a little money off of it, not much but we would walk away with cash in hand... that is until THE BANK decided to charge us a $19,000 penalty for breaking our mortgage early. Umm, what? I understand the penalty but $19,000??? Even with the money we made put into that we would still be short $7000. We are both not working, we leave in 4 days and if we don't come up with the money, the sale of the house falls through and we could be potentially sued.

You know my high blood pressure? It just got A LOT HIGHER.

This is now Wednesday afternoon when all this info comes to light and the house deal is supposed to close on Friday at noon. Let me take you on a timeline tour of the next 36 hours.

WEDNESDAY

• 4:00pm - Our lawyer who was closing the house deal (thanks Kim - you are awesome) was shocked herself at how high the penalty was and suggested that we talk to the Bank manager.

• 4:15pm - Corsiworld calls the bank, Manager is gone for the day.

THURSDAY

• 8:30am - Corsiworld meets with Lawyer to sign housing paperwork and come up with strategy on how to deal with this $7000 shortfall issue.

• 9:00am - Gio goes to bank to talk to Bank Manager (not in today) or Finance Manager (not in till noon) or any senior mortgage specialist (none in but I can talk to a junior). No thanks.

• 12:05pm - Call Finance Manager (on a call) leave message.

• 1:30pm - Finance Manager contacts Michelle, the story is told and we have a meeting today  at 4:30pm

• 4:30pm - Meet with Finance Manager, who gives us a whole song & dance about why the penalty is so high (mortgage rates so low right now, ours was 4.5% Fixed, 22 months remaining etc.). We told her about the house sale, Singapore and all that jazz and she agreed to help us out "if she could" so she tried to contact the uppity-ups who are in Toronto ofcourse and since it's now after 5 in Vancouver, they are gone for the day. Awesome. We would meet again tomorrow morning to see if we can settle this.

• 5:30pm - Meet with Lawyer to update her. She again reminds us that this has to be solved by noon tomorrow. Either with the shortfall waived or we have a cheque for $7k... awesome.

• 6:15pm - We go home with a rollercoaster of financial emotions and watch the Canucks blow it late in the third period. 

FRIDAY: D-DAY

• 8:15am - Meet with Bank. Finance Manager is going through more hoops via email and phone than a Russian Circus Freak.  I honestly feel that she has our best interests at heart but from what we are hearing on our end, the politics of getting something like this solved is near impossible as no one on the bank side wants to be the one to sign off on losing some money.

• 9:30am - Go back to the Lawyers to get some additional paperwork and return to the bank.

• 10:30am - Success! Due to some magical combination of tears, fear, info and pleading. The bank agrees to waive the $7000 difference in the penalty. So we don't walk away with anything but we don't have to pay anything out of pocket. We consider this a big win. The Finance Manager drafts up an official letter for us to hand to the lawyer, handshakes all around and we are off.

• 11:00am - Lawyer says their calculations are incorrect as they forgot to include her legal fees, we are $650 short.

• 11:05am - Gio & Michelle finally breaks down from the stress of it all and starts shaking.

• 11:10am - Lawyer calls bank to inform them of the error and they say they will look into it.

• 11:15am - In the meantime, Michelle cuts the lawyer a check to at least get the housesale closed. Losing $650 is much better than losing $7000. Lawyer agrees and says that she will rip up the check if the bank recalculates their costs and come back with a new letter.

• 11:20am - Corsiworld leaves, $650 poorer but at least we didn't have to pay $7000.

• 12:30pm - Michelle gets a call from the lawyer. The recalculated their numbers, rewrote the letter and included the legal fees. The Lawyer also ripped up Michelle's check. The house deal is closed and we walk away with nothing but at least we didn't have to pay anything either, other than stress and tears.

Moral of the story? The Banks are greedy and in these unstable financial times you will get penalized no matter what type of mortgage you have, so be wary. One thing for sure, thank god we are renting in Singapore.