Woman, 92, Given 30-Year First Home Loan

Yahoo! News ^ | 23 September 2002

[JediGirl]

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A 92-year-old Australian woman has become the nation's oldest first-time home buyer after securing a housing loan she does not have to pay off for another 30 years.

Her local financial institution is banking on the mother-of-five living to 122 under the terms of the loan.

Margaret Cole, who grew up in a poor coal-mining town in Wales, Britain, decided concerns among the nation's traditionally risk averse banks about her age would not stop her embracing the "great Australian dream" of home ownership.

"She has been a battler all her life and was not taking no for an answer," James Hunt, her real estate agent at First National Wyong, told Reuters on Monday.

She also bagged a A$7,000 ($3,850) grant from the government for first-time homebuyers, an incentive normally aimed at the young.

Cole, who emigrated to Australia in 1976, has had a little help from her daughter and brother-in-law, whose names are also on the ANZ Bank mortgage as co-guarantors.

She plans to move into her A$198,000 three-bedroom home at Watanobbi, a suburb north of Sydney on the New South Wales central coast, later this week.

[CobaltBlue]

>>Cole, who emigrated to Australia in 1976, has had a little help from her daughter and brother-in-law, whose names are also on the ANZ Bank mortgage as co-guarantors.<<

Good for grandma. When she dies, her heirs inherit, and the bank doesn't get screwed.

[Vidalia]

Let's see, which is it, the lumberjack Pythonesque mentality or the Socialist educational system that doesn't allow this loan officer a clue.

And this...?..." who grew up in a poor coal-mining town in Wales... "

Screw second hand smoke, this is amazing. Coal dust in the lungs would make this poor woman a "good fit" for the loan?

The West Nile virus would do well in Australia, but no one would know what was happening ...

[cubreporter]

Good for the bank to give this woman a loan. They should get a medal. God bless this woman too and we wish her all the happiness she can handle for the rest of her natural life in her new home. There ARE good people out there and there ARE good stories. Too bad we only hear the bad.

[sparkydragon]

I'm not sure whether it is more impressive that she convinced them to give her a loan or that she even tried at 92 years old.

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"Freedom is not the natural state of man, merely the perfect one." -- me