KBC rental, advice before meeting

everythingon said:

Clara you and your friends are part of the problem with this country. Getting yourself into debt and then complaining and thinking about trying to get debt relief for your investment mistake. You have achieved your quality of life by yourself and you have to deal with that. You should just keep your head back down and live the life you created for yourself

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I don't agree with this sentiment and find it overly simplistic and not representative of the unfortunate circumstances many people are now in due to economic downturn rather than greed.
Clara, I sympathise with the circumstances you find yourself in and I acknowledge that at face value it would appear that KBC should offer you some mitigation on payments as a sympathetic gesture. However, you must realize that the approach of any bank to this type of request is based on a business rather than personal scenario. The main criteria in assessing any request for a payment reduction is "affordability". This is based on net income against outgoings, with priority to be given to PDH and other secured debt and personal outgoings limited to the Guidelines as specified by ISI.
Kids savings are not an essential at this stage and you need to reassess these for the next couple of years. When you have a large burden of debt, savings need to be put on the back burner. The rainy day is now!!!

Clara16 said:

I haven't increased the rent in 2 years, as we have great tenants. the apartments are renting for €1500 month now we are getting 1200. I could look at a small rent increase and pay it off the capital to help bridge the negative equity and hopefully sell one day sooner. kids savings accounts are so important to me I don't think I would give them up. I will make a plan to clear personal loans in 2016 which I think is a good place to start and part KBC for another year. thank you for all the responses.

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The whole time I was reading through this, I was wondering why you were only getting €1,200 per month in rent. The one item that is immediately within your control is increasing the rent to reflect current market rents. Think of how far an extra €300 per month will go, even when adjusted for tax.

I have thought about increasing rent but weighed it up against possibly having apartment empty for 4-6 weeks to freshen up and advertised and decided against it. I have model tenants that pay early and I never hear from them or have any issues. Lease renewed in Oct I will look at raising rent in Oct 2016.