The thought of losing your home under any circumstances can be extremely frightening, stressful and depressing. Nevertheless, when your loss is due to a house repossession, the outcome can be even worse. Savings you’ve worked so hard for suddenly amount to nothing. You have to look for a new home for yourself and your family and your credit history is pretty much shot. The future looks pretty bleak for you, doesn’t it?

Given the high rate of property repossessions in South Africa (it has doubled since 2006), numerous property owners have to deal with this on a day-to-day basis. Though, there are ways in which real estate owners can prevent repossession and by being informed of what the options are, you may be able to keep the home you’ve worked so hard to get.

Every homeowner that is worried about home repossession has different financial circumstances that led to their problem. Some may severely be in debt with their piles of bills while others may only be experiencing trouble with their monthly bond payment. If you fall in the second group, perhaps refinancing your bond/mortgage may be an option if there is enough equity in the home. This is a fine substitute to selling property in a hard-hitting market when you are faced with time restrictions. 

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What seemed at one time almost a sure certainty that you would keep your home no questions asked, unfortunately has turned around into quite the opposite for many financially distressed homeowners. The high interest rates and increasing inflation rates have made it very difficult for people in good financial shape to stay on top of their bills. Those that find themselves suffering from catastrophes and circumstances beyond their control like redundancy, illness, divorce or separation are having a difficult time meeting their financial obligations each month and fear they may suffer from a home repossession. The good news is, it is most certainly possible to stop repossession.

Homeowners have every reason to fear losing their homes as the rate of repossession  in South Africa has almost doubled in the past 3 years and this started when the interest rates were not near as high as they are today, adding to the troubles homeowners have in making their bond payment.

Despite the home repossession rate, it can be alot simpler than anticipated to hold on to your property and prevent repossession completely. Something common that many home owners tend to do is to literally give up and ignore the problem hoping it will fix itself. All that eventually happens is that the arrears continually build up as well as penalty charges. By facing their problem head on, they’ll realize that they can prevent repossession from happening.

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Facing repossession can be a very emotional time in our lives. At the end of the day, as emotional as it is, it needs to be dealt with in the early stages. It is no myth that a dliemma as serious as this won't simply vanish into thin air if action is not taken. Many home owners unfortunately do tend have this attitude as they are unaware of how to deal with the situation at hand and it’s a lot easier to just run away from the problem. It is natural to think that we are doomed either way when the bank informs us that they are about to step in and repossess our property. Emotional situations like this can be very hard on one's personal life and can even effect one's health quite singificantly. It need not necessarily be this way though, the good news is that repossession can be avoided.

It is important to remember that there is no reason to be embarrassed of your situation if facing repossession. These things tend to happen in life and are often caused by no fault of our own. Rather than burying ourselves in our own self-pity, the best thing to do in a situation like this is to take action, and take action immediately in order to stop repossession of your home.

It is natural for most home owners to feel like giving up and simply handing the keys over to their bank, however this can have extremely negative repercussions down the line such as obtaining a bad credit record. This typically means that the home owner’s name  will be black-listed. Once a home owner gets a bad credit record they will typically be banned from the credit industry for the next 5 – 10 years. Having a bad credit record would also mean that something as basic as renting a property in future may prove to be difficult as most landlords perform credit checks before signing a tenant up. They will also be declined for basically any type of credit application that they apply for. This would include applications for credit cards, shopping accounts, cellphone contracts etc.

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