'''"It's the best feeling not having to answer to the bank anymore," says home owner Sam Borg. "Now that we've achieved it now we are going to start enjoying life."'''
This is the great divide in Australia's bulging mortgage belt.
"I really didn't want to be dominated by the banks all my life, we got stuck into it and paid it off in seven years" adds Sam.
Meet the Borg family. If any family should be feeling mortgage stress its them.
"$300,000 over 25 years seems like lot but if you work hard, two jobs, long hours, make a few sacrifices in life, it doesn't take that long to pay it off," Sam said.
Sam and Michelle are in their late thirties. They have eight kids under 14 and work 70 hours a week at their small fruit and veg business in Brisbane's northern outskirts.
"No new cars, no new furniture, no new TVs, no internet, no Foxtel, no football games just simple family life. I think a lot of people want to enjoy those things straight away. They want all the fancy stuff all the bells and whistles straight up but we've waited ands now it's our turn," adds Sam.
The Borgs are no different to anyone else. They've been hit by 12 successive interest rate rises, soaring fuel prices and the surging cost of groceries has put pressure on both their business and the family dinner table.
"You've just got to take them as they come if they go up you sacrifice a bit more keep fighting it, don't let them get to you."
With one in every eight Australian home owners expected to face so-called mortgage stress by the end of this year, some families are paying off their homes as fast as others pay off plasma TVs.
"I think there's a heightened expectation of what I have to have. I need the latest Plasma and everything else I think we have to get back to basics here and recognise that sometimes you have to wait a little bit," says Martin North.
Fujitsu Australia's Martin North has studied mortgage stress in depth. He says the impact of interest rate rises has been well overplayed and many home owners were responsible for their own mortgage stress.
"Banks are partly responsible because they always paint this opportunity to get more credit and more credit cards and those things so we have to be a bit more disciplined about the borrowing that we take," says Martin North.
And now Australians are paying more than ever for that overspending as petrol, grocery and energy prices soar, creating what he says is a many-headed beast, not confined to interest rate rises.
"Every time you try and chop one head off another one grows so what we are saying really is in this particular situation mortgage stress is actually driven by many different factors and you can chop the Interest Rate factor off but that won't kill off Mortgage Stress overall," adds Martin North.
Wizard Home Loans' Mark Bouris said many Australians are paying for their past sins.
"Over the past 10 years there has been a culture of overspending which was okay in a low interest rate environment but it a high interest rate environment that culture doesn't work very well," says Mark Bouris.
He says home owners have not already had their situation assessed they should now.
"Things spiral out of control extraordinarily fast and everything that can go wrong will go wrong so you've got to really take a health check right now if you haven't already done it," adds Mark.
And if borrowers are in trouble there is almost always a solution.
"I think the first thing you've got to look at is can I increase my income and I have found a lot of resourceful borrowers have started to rent out rooms or take in foreign n student. Get another job, try and get extra income, wife goes out to work or husband goes out to work and then you have to look at expenses," advises Mark.
With record numbers of Australians this year expected to have their homes repossessed or sell up before the bank does, the Borgs say the answer is to go without now and reap the benefits later.
"It's the best feeling not having to answer to the bank anymore…its awesome we love it" says Sam. "They've had a good, life we've had a good life, we don't regret anything we've done but we're really gonna start enjoying our lives right now."
