as safe as houses

As the property market continues to slump in eastern Australia, 20 families a day are being evicted from their homes - many victims of unprofessional and unregulated mortgage brokers. Ben Hills reports on one.

THERE are cups of milky coffee and a log of fruit-stuffed pastry, but there is no celebration in this neat little brick veneer bungalow in a cul-de-sac at Prairiewood, on Sydney's southwest fringe.

Four people are sitting around the table, decent, middle-aged working class people who have never been in trouble in their lives - two single mothers and a married couple - and as they tell their stories they are unable to hold back their tears.

Three years ago they were comfortably off with jobs, cars, and not much left to pay on the houses they had worked all their lives to buy. Today one has been forced to sell her home, one has just received an eviction order, one has been served a bankruptcy notice by the bank, and one is living on borrowed time.

"I knew him for so many years," says John Pavlis, wiping his eyes. "He was my friend. I trusted him. Now look what he has done. What can I do? I feel like taking a gun."

This is the house John and his wife, Fay, have lived in and worked to pay off for 13 years. Today there is a big red, white and black "For Sale" sign posted outside - it has been there for weeks, but there have been no nibbles from a market which has slid 25 per cent and more since the property market in outer Sydney peaked in early 2004.

The man Pavlis would like to get his hands on is Viron Hondros, known to any remaining friends as Vic, an unqualified, self-styled mortgage broker who has managed to ruin the lives of 11 of his fellow Greek/Australian immigrants by persuading them to take out large loans against their homes and invest the money in risky real estate deals.

In a hectic two-year binge, Hondros spent more than $12 million of other people's money buying a string of rundown properties around Sydney and in the bush. When the property market turned sour, so did their hopes of a secure future.

Hondros, meanwhile, had a lavish lifestyle with all the trimmings: waterfront mansion, power boat, BMW - and plate-smashing parties at night clubs.

Then, last November, he filed for bankruptcy, leaving his friends to pay the bills. Unless his trustee in bankruptcy can find a way to recover money he previously had transferred out of Australia and sunk into a block of apartments on a Greek island, none of them will get back a cent.

And there is nowhere for them to turn. The police have refused to investigate. The corporate watchdog ASIC says it has no power to regulate mortgage brokers. Lawyers say it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to mount a court action, money which Hondros's victims do not have.