A Deposit Bond Helped Margaret & Lawrence Keep Their Super Intact

­­When retirees Margaret and Lawrence decided to downsize, they were reluctant to draw on their superannuation to put down the deposit. Deposit Assure gave them a solution.

Many of us will reach a point in our lives when we start to think about downsizing. After all, the perfect home for raising a family isn’t always right once the children have flown the nest.

That was the story for retired couple Margaret and Lawrence at the beginning of this year. With a large two-storey family home in Green Valley, near Liverpool, NSW, the couple knew it was time to downsize.

“Now it’s just the two of us, it’s a big house to be in,” Margaret explains. “I suffer from arthritis and my husband is recovering from a car accident – everything was telling us that it’s time to find a new home.”

After searching up and down the coast, the couple landed upon an over-55s village in Leppington, just 20 minutes’ drive south of their current home. Here, they found a modern one-storey property being built. They put down a small deposit to keep it for three weeks while they worked out what to do next.

“We were working out how to pay the deposit and whether to draw from our super. It was actually the village manager who told us about deposit bonds and how they can help us. We didn’t know such a thing was available!” recalls Margaret.

A deposit bond is a substitute for the cash deposit used to guarantee the commitment of a buyer to the contract of sale. A key advantage of deposit bonds is that there’s no need for cash upfront, which means buyers like Margaret and Lawrence can keep their savings where they’re working hard.

“We didn’t want to use Lawrence’s super from work, and our house isn’t going to be sold until October or November. So a deposit bond gave us the opportunity to keep our money where it is until the house is built.”

For the couple, this was a huge relief. Getting access to their super would have taken time and lots of forms. “And once money is taken out of a super fund, you can’t put it back in,” Margaret adds. Using a deposit bond in place of a cash deposit meant they could keep their nest egg secure and growing for their future.

The first company Margaret contacted was Deposit Assure, which provides deposit bonds backed by the A+ credit rated insurer, QBE Insurance (Australia) Ltd. Margaret says, despite not knowing anything about deposit bonds, the application process was a lot easier than she expected.

“Deposit Assure made the whole experience really easy,” she says. “Peter walked me through every step, which paperwork we needed and everything.”

Now the couple is looking forward to moving into their new home early next year.

“We’ll miss our home – it’s been nineteen years – but it’s time to move on and make a new start. Deposit Assure have helped us do that and I can’t thank them enough.”