Are non-tracker mortgages more likely to be in long-term arrears than tracker mortgages?

[Brendan Burgess]

This has come up a few times. This study from the Central Bank has the following interesting table

Long-Term Mortgage Arrears in Ireland, by Terry O’Malley




Look at the dark blue columns which represents arrears cases over 2 years at 31 December 2017.

Of these about 49% were trackers, 51% were non-trackers.

However, these data refer only to mortgages issued between 2005 and 2007. These are not only the peak period for house prices,but also for the issue of trackers.

For mortgages issued before 2005 which are in LTMA today, there would be more SVRs simply because most of them were SVRs.

It seems that the interest rate is not a big determiner of whether someone is in LTMA or not.

Brendan

 

[Brendan Burgess]

The light blue columns represent cases which were in arrears which have since cured.

They are slightly more likely to be on trackers.

Not sure how to interpret this. Where someone was in mortgage arrears and negative equity, but had a cheap tracker, they should have been more motivated to try to resolve the issue.

Oddly enough, it would have been in the banks interest to be less flexible with them so that they could get out of the tracker mortgage. But it seems that the banks were slightly more likely to restructure trackers.

Brendan