Credit rating (AUSTRALIA)?

Question

My husband and I would like to buy a house in the near future but have recently found out that I have a poor credit rating. When I was 18 I helped out my mother by becoming a 2nd applicant on a number of loans that she took out to get ahead. I was unaware until now that she has never paid a cent on these bills and they are all defaulted against my name including a few court judgements. My mother hid my mail and screened phone calls so that I never found out about it. It wasn't until my husband and I started looking into homeloans that we found out. Do I have any legal rights in this matter. I simply did as my mother told me to when I was 18 and now I could be paying for it for many years to come and my husband and I look as though we will be unable to buy a house. We are expecting our first baby in Feb so this is rather distressing. ANY advice would be very much appreciated. THANKS!!

Answer 1

Unfortunately there is no easy answer here. The first thing you need to do is to contact the companies concerned explain what has happened and set about repaying the outstanding amounts. Once the debts are paid you will need a substantial deposit probably around 20% but preferably more. Because you have an adverse credit rating you will be deemed as a higher risk than someone who hasn't and you will need to mitigate this risk. The size of your deposit will do this as no financier will be prepared to risk any exposure on the deal.

Always be honest and upfront about the debts when you apply with any financier or broker. Explain how they occured but be prepared to take some accountability yourself. There are a lot of people in Australia with bad credit rating and they are falsely led to believe they won't get credit again.

Stay away from so called 'bad credit experts' many of the unscrupulous lending practices of these poeple or organisations do not serve the best long term interests of the client and are primarily why we are experiencing the credit crunch we are in now.

All the best and good luck with the baby!

david

http://www.equipfin.com.au/

Answer 2

Unfortunately if you were a joint signatory, you are jointly responsible for the loans.

With these things on your credit file, they are very bad and I'm pretty sure the home loan would have to be applied for in your husbands name.

There are different stages of defaults:

default - unpaid finance/ bill usually over $100.

clearout- confirmed missing debtor, very bad on your credit file.

court action- this shows if the companies ever tried to take you to court.

Contact Veda in australia to get your credit file, any more help after that you can email me [e-mail]

Hope this helps somewhat