Its been a while between posts. We have been doing more observing then writing this month. Don’t worry, we haven’t missed a thing! We have gathered some great information so far, and will continue doing so. We definitely won’t be giving to much away of what we know. It’s funny how Elders Real Estate Castle Hill or someone else, have been using property maintenance services from Ray White’s maintenance contractor, up until the home got put back on the market. Elders must have thought they were getting away with what they were doing, we have been quiet for a little while.

Gee, the pool’s looking green. The creepy crawly is back! Love the new door nobs in the bathrooms and bedroom down stairs! The pot is definitely gone.

We love how Elders have changed all the wording in their advertising for the property, (that we will of course have to pay for). Suddenly, Elders are promoting the property in a much better light. Why? Is  that because what we challenged them on was true? I hope all our readers saw the shocking way Grant McEnally and Elders were promoting our property the first time they tried.  Did you suddenly decide that you were doing a poor job? Did the mortgage insurers pay you a visit Bruce?

We noticed that Elders Real Estate Castle Hill are deliberately not publishing the location of the auction. Even though we said we wanted to come to the Auction with one of the major television networks to film this deliberate fire sale, it seems that Bruce Gilmore is doing all he can to prevent us knowing where the Auction will be held.

The problem is Bruce, that we are available on this day, and so is the reporter and film crew. It could be at the Hills Lodge, at the home, somewhere else. Who knows? The suspense is almost killing us, but we do look forward to the big day. You’re going to have to let the cat out of the bag sooner or later, or how will anyone have the opportunity to purchase this years bargain?

Okay, so back to the main reason for this post.

What happens when a home in one street is sold for way under market value? Well… a few things happen. One, buyers who are prepared get to buy a good top quality home for a really cheap price, and you can’t blame anyone looking for a really good deal now, can you?

But what happens when its much more then a good deal, and it becomes a careless deal?

Lets consider some of the ways that other homes in the street and surrounding areas become impacted by careless decisions by banks and mortgagee sales, conducted by local real estate agents, who are out for one thing, and one thing only, to fill their pockets with the commission that they will receive from the fire sale of the home.

Lets say the true market value of a home is $825,000 and other comparable sales in the area have sold for this and similar prices. Now what happens when that same house is being marketed by a local real estate agent (Elders Real Estate Castle Hill), and they set the buyer expectations at around the $600,000 range? Well… 474 interested lookers have an expectation of buying this home for about $600,000 (can you blame them?).

When the sales people take people through the home, they reveal that the home is a mortgagee sale, and encourage people to expect to get a bargain.

Okay, lets fast forward to Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 10am.

A few interested bidders, (or many), turn up to the Auction all expecting a bargain. Some lucky person will buy themselves a great home for way under true market value. Even other real estate agents in the local area have said that Elders Real Estate Castle Hill are marketing this home way under its true market value. (By the way Bruce, you are officially being watched via this website by other local real estate agents who have opted in to keep tabs on this scenario). The reason this sale is being watched with interest, is that for one of the first times, someone has the guts to share what it is like to be on the other side of a mortagee in possession.

Now, lets pretend that a lucky buyer gets this home for $650,000 (probably under). Good luck to them, but what are the consequences of this fire sale that Elders Real Estate Castle Hill are actively doing as we speak? Well, the median values of homes in Parsonage Road will drop for a start. The surrounding streets become impacted as well. Any spike in prices either up or down in a postcode directly impacts the median price for a suburb. Remember Bruce Gilmour’s name, Parsonage Road, he is happily firesaling our home, and you will all be affected by your house prices dropping even further as well!

Mortgagee sales will happen. Its a sad fact of life. When mortgagee sales happen in a particular suburb, it forces the house prices down in that area.

We are just one family in many around the country who is being impacted by a mortgagee sale. We don’t seek compassion, charity or sympathy. The whole reason this web site was created was to encourage people who are facing a mortgagee sale, to seek a fair and transparent sale through the courts and to get whatever help they can to prevent it from happening. The enormous lose that comes from loosing your family home to the bank is almost undiscribable. All the years of hard work, regualr repayments, improvements to the property, etc, to have it all ripped out from under you, there are no words to describe it. Then to have a local real estate agency happily be involved in fire saling the property - you’d never have a good word to say about them again for the rest of your life. You reap what you sow Bruce Gilmour, it may take years, but you will reap what you are sowing from this sale long after you have spent your commission.

People who have not had any financial hiccups generally could not care less, and from some of the emails we have received, this has become more evident. Life has a funny way of presenting curve balls at the best of times, and what goes around comes around. You just never know when something unexpected will pop up. Be it a health scare or loss of job (or something else). it could even be the looming world financial crisis.

For residents of Castle Hill, you can all personally thank Bruce Gilmore from Elders Real Estate Castle Hill for helping to screw up the values of your suburb in December 2008. We gave Bruce and his office the opportunity to prevent this from happening. For young families in the area who have purchased recently in the last few years, remember to drop into the Elders office and shake Bruce’s hand. Maybe buy him a Christmas card, and say thanks for contributing to screwing the values of our area.

What about those in the local Castle Hill area who are mortgaged to the max, and are having trouble meeting their mortgage repayments? House prices sliding down even further does not help the situation, as these vendors cannot get the price that they need to cover the debt they have, and then they have to take into consideration the real estate agents commissions as well. Mortgagee sales contribute directly to the local suburbs house values. Most mortgagee sales are fire saled, and it is not just the old home owner who loses, it is the local community.

We gave Bruce Gilmore and Grant McEnally proof that what they are doing is illegal - they have been put on notice. We did not remind them of the consequences of the drop in values that will happen if they proceed with their actions, however, being real estate agents, they would already know the problem they are about to cause. That large commission is worth it, isen’t it? All they want is the money!

One law firm instantly walked away from this issue once they received the same information, however, Elders Real Estate Castle Hill are proceeding regardless. Perhaps they have sought legal opinion. For their own sake, we trust they will have got confirmation from their legal representatives in writing that they have nothing to worry about, because when this matter is heard in court soon, or in years to come, they will not be able to say “We were just doing our job” or “We were told we had nothing to be concerned about” - they have been put on notice and have zero excuse.

It’s not too late for Bruce and his office to back out of this deliberate fire sale. What do you think he will choose to do? Why don’t you watch and see! You could put a bet on it and be guaranteed to win.

In this post, we want to show you how the banks can get away with anything they like because they are mortgage insured. This is a true situation, happening presently, right at the moment.

We want to show you pictures of our home when we had it on the market exactly one year ago, when we still resided in the residence. Please note how lovely and homely the house looks, and how well cared for it is as we still live there.

Look at the advertising, the words used by the local real estate agent, to promote the property in the best light to gain the best possible price for the home owner. He has purposefully enhanced the qualities of the property to showcase it. Everything in regards to the property was done to make the property as appealing as possible, to achieve the best possible win for the home owner, and in return the real estate agent would have received his commission for his work in helping achieve the best possible result.

Front Yard

Lounge Room

Lounge Room

Family Room

Kitchen

Dining

Kitchen

Main Bedroom

Back Patio

Pool

Pool

Front Foyer

A sample add from the local real estate agent last year used all the above “Before Photo’s” and used the following marketing copy. The difference between the 2 real estate agents and their marketing to promote the property in its best possible light is amazing.

22 Parsonage Road, CASTLE HILL
Inspect: By Appointment or Call For Open

Approx 1,000sq - Glorious Grounds

A delightful design with fresh interiors and a showcase of features, offering
elegant country charm.

• 5 bedrooms, including two master suites
• Formal lounge- sandstock open fireplace with separate dining
• Granite kitchen with new stainless steel appliances and huge walk-in pantry
• Airconditioned, polished floors and trendy carpet
• Rumpus and spacious family room
• Saltwater inground pool with spa - northerly aspect
• Drive thru garage and loads of extra parking
• Flexible settlement available

The space, style and size will surprise.

Click Here To See Buyer Feedback on the same Home

Now we would like to show you the SAME property, one year later, being put on the market by the bank, and all that work for them. Note, that we now do not reside at the property, as with a mortgagee in possession the property must be vacant. Normally, the real estate agent who is present on the day to accept vacant possession carries the sale through to the end. Our case is an exception to this rule, Homeway First National, Castle Hill (Krys Yard and Bill Austin), who accepted vacant possession of this property, appear to have now turned their backs on the sale, and their appears to be new real estate agents who have taken over, being Grant McEnally from Elders at Castle Hill.

We are not sure if they will continue to sell this property either, as at the moment, they have taken down all their advertising of the property from the internet. It is very important that you are aware of how this real estate agency, and Grant McNalley in particular, were purposefully doing the dirty on us, for the banks, and also for their commissions. They have tried to hide the evidence by removing it from the internet, though we managed to have a copy. Below is his way of promoting the property to disadvantage us, the home owner, but to aid the bank in getting the property sold for any old price, so that the bank can be paid out in full by the mortgage insurer once the property is sold. Of course, he will get his commission for his lack of bother, and Dallas and I will be the ones that pay him this.

Note the poor pictures, making the property look hagard and old. Surely the photographer could have done much better, I could have.

Is THIS the Best that Grant McEnally can do?

Another example of Grant McEnally's Work

Note the HUGE difference in the property now. Note the way that Grant McEnally has used words to promote the property. Note how he is letting everyone know that the property must be sold. He has not promoted any qualities of the property with thought or bother, and I don’t believe that any home owner would appreciate this sort of advertising for their property. He thinks that this is a blue bird listing, and he doesn’t care. He is supposed to be in the top 3 of Elders real estate agents. Boy, he certainly isen’t working for us!

Doesn’t the property look dreadful when no one lives there? Because the property has been vacant now for 3 months, everything has become overgrown and run down, whereas if we still lived there, we would be taking great care of the property. The property is empty, and does not have that lovely feeling of warmth, or homeliness. It is stark, and empty. And the advertising adds to the desperation of the matter that this property just has to be sold, so that the bank can get their money, but only AFTER the property is sold. In this situation, it is the home owner who is the looser, as the banks are fully mortgage insured, and will be covered no matter what the shortfall is. The real estate agent will also receive his EASY commission from his blue lird listing.

We, as the owners of the property, are not allowed to step foot on the property, which is highly unfortunate for us, as we would have maintained this property beautifully to allow it to continue to blossom under our care, and present well for sale. We did fight this matter in court, but to no avail for us as Perpetual will not negioate, they want to get their money, no matter what the cost to their customer, the home borrower. So now, we will wait and see what transpires.

Now, not only has the bank being continuely, daily, allowing interest to acrue, and fees and bank charges also keep adding to the home owners eventual bill, but other activities that will cost the home owner more money have been accuring as well.

As the property is unattended, and no one lives there, the opportunities for people to steal things from the property becomes a real player in this as well. For example, when we had the front gardens landscaped, we CONCRETED a lovely pot into the corner of the garden. The reason that we CONCRETED this pot into the garden was so that no one would be able to just walk in and steal it. But now, as we don’t live there anymore, someone, maybe the real estate agents lawnmower man, has gone to the bother to either get a crowbar to hammer away at the concrete to remove the pot, or get some sort of masanory tool for cutting concrete to remove the pot. The reason I bring this up, it’s not only stealing that is very wrong, but these type of low acts just makes the property value go down even more, causing even more grief to the only ones affected by this matter, the old home owners.

On leaving the property, we left behind the creepy crawly, and pool equipment as well. These seem to have been happily taken as well, as they are no longer in the pool, which is, of course, crystal clear now thanks to the local Baulkham Hill’s pool shop getting this job from the local real estate agent. Maybe they thought they would like to take these items for themself too?

Now work has been done to the property as well to add to the ever acruing costs. Air conditioning has been installed in 3 of the 4 upstairs bedrooms. I can’t understand why you just didn’t bother to put the air conditioning in all 4 bedrooms? The air conditioning men spent a couple of days installing these 3 units. Has anyone been talking to Judith, our nasty old neighbour? Looks to me like she has been giving someone the run down.

The pool men spent a good day at the property bringing the pool back to sparkling, and returns regularly to do his water checks. Did you make some money on our creepy crawley?

The lawn mower man came, and did an absolutely hopeless job of mowing the grass, and then took a trailer load of rubbish away with him. He didn’t even bother to wipersnip, or use a catcher to mow the lawns.

Now, Dallas and I will be charged for everything that goes on at this property. Even all the behind the scenes things that happen, that the general public have no idea about, for example, Tagma Property Consultants. We will be charged their fee of over $1000, as well as the real estate agents fee which will come up around $20,000. How would you feel if you were about to be ripped off big time, or as Justice Hislop said to Dallas at the Supreme Court one day, jipped! Justice Hislop could see our point, and totally agreed with it, as each time we stood before him in court, he awarded in our favour.

For people feeling the urge to judge, like our old neighbour on the townhouse side, life is very circumstancial, and you never know what may come your way health wise. Sickness that doesn’t go away quickly, or an injury that causes you not to be able to work, can really put a dent in your cash flow which is what happened to us. With the worldwide financial crisis that we are all facing, and the massive job looses that are predicted, lets hope that Australians are going to be able to continue to afford their mortgage repayments if they don’t have work. The banks certainly won’t be sympathitic, the banks just want their money. it is a very difficult position to be in if you are financed to the max, but property prices have fallen below the debt. This puts home owners in a very difficult position should any of these life circumstances happen. No one can guarantee a smooth ride through life. The reason we are fighting this is because changes need to be made for the hard working, innocent Australians who have given their all to home ownership, and then life circumstance has happened to come along their path.

The property above is the same property. The first pictures are of a property being sold before the banks had taken possession. The property is well presented and well advertised. The average buyer is happy to pay around middle to low $800,00’s. The buyers all say that this is comparable to other properties that they have viewed that are of similar quality.

The second lot of pictures is the same property being sold AFTER the banks have taken possession, after people have helped themselves to whatever they wished. 3 months have now passed since the bank took possession. The property is poorly advertised and being presented in a way that does not promote the property in a good light, therefore meaning the property will be severely firesaled on purpose by the real estate agent Grant McNalley. Grant has slipped the property into the $600,000 price range, that is between $250,000 to $200,000 under what the property was selling for one year prior.

We thought it was interesting how one property can look so different, and be marketed so differently. It just goes to show how the banks and all their little workers show lack of duty of care when it comes to achieving the best possible sales price for the home borrower. The reason that none of them care, is that none of them have anything to lose, as they will all make generous amounts of money from the sale. I suppose there is one thing they have to loose, that is their reputation!

Dear Readers,

Last night, we posted on the lastest information surrounding the sale of our family home in Castle Hill. After posting the information on this web site, we then emailed Elders Real Estate Castle Hill to let them know that we know they are promoting our property now and that we have put up a post about it on this web site.

Elders Listing of 22 Parsonage Rd, Castle Hill, as of Thursday 16 October, 2008

This is the first listing we found on the RealEstate.com.au on Thursday 16 October, 2008. Again, the marketing approach for this property states Property Must Be Sold! In other words, the owners are really desperate and it needs to be sold.

So when we found that Elders Real Estate Castle Hill were now promoting this property, we went over to their website and did a search to show all their property listings for homes over $700,000.

We found nothing.

Then we did a search for all their listings over $650,000.

We found nothing.

So finally, we then did a search to show all properties that are $600,000 and above.

Bingo! There was our property listed just under a home that was listed for $609,000! This seems like an intention to attract buyers in the $600,000 price range, otherwise they would have no reason to deceive the public… surely, they would never do anything like this. They are Real Estate Agents after all, and we all know they tell the truth and hold ethics in the highest esteem.

My Home listing as at Thursday, 16 October, 2008

So we thought we would keep searching around to see how else our property was being promoted.

Now we know that Elders Real Estate Castle Hill will probably think we have too much time on our hands, but its important that everyone knows what goes on with these mortgagee in possession sales.

Lets face it, if there was nothing wrong with how they were attempting to market and sell our property, why would they suddenly remove all references of the property less than 12 hours after hearing from us?

Again, we see the sub heading read Property Must Be Sold! Basically, the wording, and the pictures are all the same as the what they posted on realestate.com.au because many of these web sites feed other web sites, to make the promotion process much faster.

At or around 1.00pm Friday 17 October, 2008 there had been 160 hits showing interest on this property. So, at or around 4pm Friday 17 October, 2008, in preparation for this post, we went back to Elders Real Estate Castle Hill’s web site, and found that the listing for our home had suddenly been removed.

Naturally, we figured this was a technical hiccup, so we then when over to realestate.com.au and then myhome.com.au. To our surprise, we found our property had been removed from these web sites as well.

Oh dear, what is going on now?

Hey Dude, where's Property ID 105278755 gone?

Luckily, we took note of the unique property id on the realestate.com.au web site. That unique property id was: 105278755.

The only thing was, this property id is no longer in the system.

The image to the left suggests this happens when the property has been sold or leased.

So where did this listing go?

We can only come to two conclusions.

1) The property has either been sold or leased, but how could this happen if Elders Real Estate Castle Hill and particularly, Grant McEnally followed the law, in the way properties must be promoted for sale? There is no For Sale sign at the property as of Friday evening, 17 October, 2008, and there never has been, despite Perpetual Limited now having the property in their possession for 3 months! How long does it take to prepare a contract for sale of land? (We had one prepared in 24 hours)!

2) They felt uneasy about promoting this property, and decided to remove it until they know their next move. You can’t help but think that they have got cold feet.

Google Search for "22 Parsonage Road"

If you go to Google, and do a search on “22 Parsonage Rd” you will see that Google still has the listing details, but if you click on the listing in Google, no information will show up.

But the great thing about Google, is the way it stores the Cache listing of what it has already indexed into its search engine.

Google is good for many things, and this is yet another great feature of Google, showing how Elders Real Estate Castle Hill do the Now You See It… Now You Don’t magic trick.

Fresh Google listings of the promotion of 22 Parsonage Road Castle Hill.

So the results of the search in Google, when you enter “22 Parsonage Rd” show several different Real Estate web sites with the address of 22 Parsonage Road Castle Hill, but none of them display any information, because the details have been removed.

We have put a circle around the word Cached that appears under the Google listing.

Click on the Cached link and you will see that Google has a snap shot of what they indexed from these web sites a day or so before hand.

So we would naturally ask, why has all this information suddenly been removed?

We know that Elders Real Estate Castle Hill received our email because we have a Return Receipt from Christine Lawrence, who is listed as the Reception and Admin Assistant on their web site. We are yet to get a reply to our email, so we can’t say why this property listing has been removed from promotions.

All we did was inform Elders Real Estate Castle Hill of the whole truth about what is going to be happening from where we sit, and that we expect that Grant McEnally will be ethical with every prospective sales lead, with the information he does, and does not give out.

One closing question we would ask Grant McEnally from Elders Real Estate Castle Hill is about the price point that they setup on their web site. Did you really expect to bring in lots of people who believed they would be paying around $600,000 for this property? Was that your intention? If not, what was your intention? Is it true that “The Bank” set a very high reserve price, yet the buyer inquiry range is for $600,000 properties, so the property would naturally pass in? Is it also true that as a real estate agent, and with “The Banks” permission, you can then start receiving private offers? Is it true that Tony Anderson from Tagma Property Consultants (property introducers) have special buyers lined up to purchase these mortgagee sales, after the auction has been passed in?

You are more then welcome to place your comment on this website and we will publish it - you have the option of clearing these questions up to address the public’s interest, particularly those who are in the process of loosing their home in the same way as us.

In the Supreme Court of NSW, August 19 2008, Perpetual Limited’s Barrister clearly stated that they had received curb side valuations (not a true on site valuation), that the property was valued between $650,000 - $720,000 (and this was only a curb side valuation, way under true market value). When Perpetual Limited let us borrow the money for this property, they sent a registered valuer (September 2005) who attended the property for over 1 hour, going over everything with a fine tooth comb, came back with a $950,000 valuation.

We all know that bank valuations are normally more conservative, so we would really like to know why the search on your web site was set at $600,000 buyer enquiry price ranges?

Quite a few months back, I was informed by a not so nice neighbour of the presence of two middle aged men walking around our property between the hours of 5.30pm and 6pm one weekday afternoon, about the 20th July, 2008. By this stage, we had moved out of the property. I instantly knew that these men had to be real estate agents.

I also recall receiving a call from a male real estate agent from Elders Real Estate Castle Hill around the same time. I cannot recall who this sales man was, but I know it was not Craig Alexis, as I had spoken with him before and found him pleasant to speak with. Whoever this was, had an air and attitude about them in the way they spoke to me. The phone call was full of questions for me by the caller, and then the caller very smugly, and with underlining meaning to his message, told me that “we would leave it like that then”, as I wasn’t giving him any information, and did not wish to speak to him. I mentioned this call to Dallas, and then we proceeded to forget about it.

That is until today. We have been watching the process of the preparation of the property for sale by the bank. We knew that the time was getting very close for the property to finally arrive on the market by the amount of activity going on (basically everyone spending whatever money they liked for Dallas and I to be billed, like putting new air conditioning in the property!) We’ve noticed the theft that has taken place as well (whoever has the beautiful urn pot that was concreted into the front garden, I must say I am impressed with your desperation to take something that doesn’t even belong to you, well done!)

Oh, yes, getting back to today. To our absolute surprise on checking realestate.com.au today, we found our property listed with ELDERS Real Estate at CASTLE HILL!

Where has Homeway First National gone with the not so lovely Krys Yard and Bill Austin? You can’t be serious that they walked away from an easy listing because of us? Maybe First National didn’t appreciate the truth being told about their sales people, how they work for the bank in these type of situations, and against their local community. We never heard from Stewart Bunn again, First Nationals National Communications manager. Maybe we had way to much evidence of Krys Yard’s slimy, back door dealings with other companies to assist an unethical sale for us, but to get her hands on her commissions? Maybe Krys Yard does have a conscience after all, and decided that what she was doing was wrong? Only First National and the individuals involved know why they walked away from continuing to sell our property for the bank, but we are absolutely dumbfounded that they gave up! It obviously wasn’t worth it for them.

Well, now we would like to introduce to you the new salesman working to assist Perpetual Limited.

Grant can be contacted on 02 9899 3311

This is Grant McEnally. He is proudly and willingly assisting Perpetual Limited and its shareholders get richer. You see, it doesn’t matter how much Grant McEnally sells this house for, Perpetual Limited will receive everything it is owed as Perpetual Limited are 100% Mortgage Insured by Genworth Financial Mortgage Insurance. His intentions have already been made clear, that he, along with the bank, intend to totally fire sale our property. It will make no difference to him. He will get paid his generous commission for conducting a short sale on the property in his local community (we will be charged this for his lack of duty of care to obtain the best price for us). Maybe Tony Anderson from Tagma Property Consultants will pay him a generous commission as well for helping sell the property to one of his mates behind the back door? Surely this kind of underhanded behaviour would not happen with our trusty local real estate agents, would it?

The property was on the market exactly one year ago for the middle $800’s. Our property only shows up on the Elders Real Estate Castle Hill website when you type in properties around $600,000. Late in 2005, Perpetual Limited’s own property valuer valued this home at $950,000 and we had spent thousands on the property since that time. Yes, we know the market has dropped, but we also have access to RP Data and know what properties have sold for recently, that are similar to our home.

When you are on the Elders Real Estate Castle Hill website, and you look at properties for sale in the Castle Hill area, if you put in a search to show properties for $700,000 and above, our property does not show up. When you put in $650,000 and above, our property does not show up. When you put in $600,000 and above, there it is! So this is either a cheap and nasty lead generator technique to get as much response as possible, or blatent intentional short sale (which means to sell a property at a massive loss, so that the old home owner is stuck with a shortfall debt).

There are not too many people around who actually like the banks. I don’t think there are too many people around who actually like real estate agents either.

Grant McEnally is actually doing the Hills community a great injustice here by assisting the banks to short sale this property. The more this is done by real estate agents in the local area, the more house prices and values will continue to fall. Most people today are mortgaged to the max, and a lot of people wouldn’t be able to sell their home already for what the debt is. House prices falling just makes this problem worse. The more members of the local community that have to face huge losses from mortgagee sales, when they have been short sold, means that many of these families will face massive financial ruin and ultimately,  bankruptcy will become more common.

Anyway, we just wanted you to meet the local, caring real estate agent who is going to do the dirty on us for the banks and their profits, and of course his easy commission.

Now, back to Homeway First National Real Estate Castle Hill, just because you have walked away, does not mean this is over. You will get a much better understanding of this in the next few weeks, as will Elders Real Estate Castle Hill.