Until debt do us part

An old saying has it that a bank is a place that lends you an umbrella in fair weather, and asks for it back when it rains.

Like every nugget of folk wisdom, it contains some truth - banks reserve the right to demand that any debts, including mortgages on family homes, be repaid at any time. They don?t even need a borrower to start missing repayments, providing the bank has a "commercial" reason to ask for the money back.

Exercising that commercial right inevitably makes customers bitter, says banking ombudsman Liz Brown. About a quarter of the thousand or so complaints made to her each year are from borrowers unhappy at the way they have been treated when they run into repayment trouble.

Most she rejects because hurt feelings alone are not a valid reason for a complaint.

Bitter well describes Wellington property investor Dave Renwick. His ambitions of becoming a millionaire through property investment lie in tatters after he missed repayments on mortgages of just over $800,000 with the BNZ.

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