My home loan with PNCS was paid off in 2015 but not discharged as I was considering redrawing. As I no longer want to remain with PNCS I will need to discharge the mortgage as I no longer have a savings account with them either. Their fee to discharge is $171.20 to Langdate and PNCS admin fee of $350. Has anyone ever successfully negotiated a reduction in the admin fee as it seems a bit high? Also next month they are changing to electronic copy of titles. Would I be better off with a paper copy of the title or electronic?
Discharge mortgage fee
spring89 on 22/03/2019 - 17:27
Comments
Thanks. The mortgage was taken out in 2000. Will the fees still be relevant? I should still have the docs.
Just checked with Landgate and as of 1.12.18 all discharges must be online via the bank. Grrrr
Did you pay any loan termination fee back when you paid it off? The discharge fees usually are broken into:
1 Actual titles office fee.
2 Thanks for nothing fee for ending the loan.
3 Jacked up admin fee for work experience kid sending a piece of paper discharge to the title office that they fleece people with.3 is the one to try to save on. They often charge their own admin fee and then use a large conveyancing company who add their admin fees for simple form paperwork and postage.
If you can't, $500 is still OK for exiting. Congrats for paying it off.
It should specify the discharge fee in your contract. The negotiation on the fee should've been done at the time of signing that contract.
I think that $350 isnt a little bit of money, but really, what's it in the whole scheme of things? haha. It's likely to be less than a month of interest on one of your initial repayments. I would be celebrating that the mortgage is finally gone! :)
Check that it isn't cheaper to withdraw a $2000 and pay interest on it (and withdraw again when you are close to paying it off again). Treat it as a cheap personal loan with no application needed.
My mortgage has had the repayments set at $7 a month for the last 2 years where the balance has remained between ~$20-50 at all times (redrawing every 6 months). I have no monthly/annual fees so can keep this up until I sell, it's cheaper than discharging and as a bonus it's harder to fraudulently sell the house from under me (rare but not unknown for scammers to sell a house to someone else while the owner is overseas, it's tough luck if this happens as the new owner owns it legally and you have to chase whatever dodgy real estate allowed it. At most I'm up for $2 a year in interest.
I might need to pay a discharge fee when I sell, but that's a problem for my future self to deal with in money that is worth less than today.
had the repayments set at $7 a month
is that something that needs to be requested/done manually ?
My bank let me change repayments online (as long as the projected repayment date was < the 30 year end date). Would error when I tried $1 but $7 it had no problem with. Not sure if there was a value in between it would have accepted, I didn't want to try my luck and get anyone to look at it manually.
I'll just start off by saying i work for a big 4
The landgate fee you won't have any luck with, the discharge fee is also standard for any release of titles as there is working in the back end that needs to be done, however the discharge fee if your a long term bank client i'd suggest you pay it now and then lodge a compliant to get a refund if your a retail client (most refunds get approved and if not complain a bit more until it does) if your personally manage by a business banker or private banker they can generally waive it if you ask
You really need to understand the difference between your and you're. This was a pain to read.
$170 with the titles office sounds about right. That other admin fee sounds like the expensive jacked up option when you can do things yourself. Check your original mortgage agreement on the fees you can't avoid, but definitely discharge it yourself and don't pay admin fees for them to send the discharge to the titles office.