Home Sold Off For $20,000 AFter Credit Card Debt [AU]
Kay Dibben
A BRISBANE couple lost their $315,000 home over a credit card debt of $8000, only finding out after the home was sold for $20,000 at a bailiff's auction.
The first they knew about it was when the new owner, who had to pay the couple's outstanding $220,000 mortgage, phoned them and said: "Get out."
Legal Aid Queensland lawyer Catherine Uhr said the couple were not given notice of the auction in January.
"All this married couple got back from the $20,000 that was paid for their house was a cheque for less than $5000, because of costs," said Ms Uhr, of the Consumer Protection Unit.
Legal Aid Queensland says it is just one of several cases of debt collection companies moving to sell Queenslanders' homes at bailiffs' auctions to recover credit card debts of less than $10,000.
LAQ says debt collection companies buy small credit card debts off lenders, often obtaining judgment for payment of the debt in a New South Wales court, then getting enforcement warrants for bailiffs' auctions in Queensland courts.
Since November, LAQ has handled five such cases, negotiating with creditors and stopping the auctions at the last minute in four of them.
In one case a debt collection company tried to sell a home over a debt of only $850.
A Browns Plains purchasing manager, 39, who had a credit card debt of $5000, found out about the bailiff's auction of the $385,000 four-bedroom home she and her husband fully owned, five days before it was due.
"We had bought our house and the credit card was part of the deal with the bank," the woman said.
"We later refinanced and we believed the credit card had been paid off."
Eventually the woman wrote to the debt collection company, agreeing to a repayment plan.
"I never received a reply, but I later got a call from a woman who said, 'Now we can take you for all we can get'."
The woman said she found out about the pending auction when a man rang offering her financial advice.
"It was a huge shock," she said.
The woman said she received a bailiff's letter about the auction two days before it was scheduled.
She paid $11,000 to stop it – just minutes before it was due to start.
A 40-year-old Jindalee mother-of-seven found out her $650,000 home was to be auctioned just after Easter, when a friend saw the bailiff's ad two weeks earlier.
The woman admitted she was "slack" in paying her credit card debt, but only owed about $3000.
A solicitor negotiated to stop the auction.
www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25454286-3102,00.html