{"id":17422,"date":"2012-11-22T16:21:56","date_gmt":"2012-11-22T06:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=17422"},"modified":"2013-03-25T22:28:34","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T12:28:34","slug":"sbrc-calls-in-debt-collectors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2012\/11\/22\/sbrc-calls-in-debt-collectors\/","title":{"rendered":"SBRC Calls In Debt Collectors"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 22, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

The South Burnett Regional Council decided yesterday to ask debt collectors to pursue 39 errant ratepayers in a last-ditch effort to avoid repossessing their properties.<\/p>\n

The ratepayers have all failed to pay rates for at least three years and also failed to come to any arrangement to pay off their arrears by installments.<\/p>\n

Councillors were told at this month’s meeting that once the SBRC began formal repossession proceedings the process could not be stopped.<\/p>\n

Ratepayers would have three months to settle their arrears in full, or have their property sold at auction for its unimproved capital value or the amount of outstanding rates, whichever was higher.<\/p>\n

If a property was sold, the Council would recover the outstanding rates from the sales proceeds and remit any remaining money to the property owner or mortgagee. <\/p>\n

But if the property failed to sell at auction, the Council would be deemed to be the purchaser and could dispose of it as and when it saw fit.<\/p>\n

Yesterday – as it promised to do last month – the Council published a full list of the 39 defaulting properties in its minutes (down from 43 a month ago, and roughly half the 79 properties in question earlier this year).<\/p>\n

However, councillors agreed that they would still prefer to avoid repossession if at all possible.<\/p>\n

“Some of these properties have houses on them and we’d be selling someone’s home out from under them,” Mayor Wayne Kratzmann said.<\/p>\n

They agreed to engage debt collectors as a last-ditch effort to see if they could locate the owners and reach a repayment agreement with them within the next 90 days.<\/p>\n

A report on the results of this final effort will be tabled at Council’s February 2013 meeting.<\/p>\n