David Hall:"50% of those in long term arrears are paying nothing"

https://twitter.com/davidhall75/status/675666571851898880

Not sure where he gets this figure, but it's probably about right. In many of the cases we have seen in the Circuit Courts, the borrowers are paying nothing.

There are 13,000 accounts over 1 year in arrears and 37,000 over two years in arrears.

That is about 40,000 borrowers. (There are 1.2 accounts for each borrower).

So there are 20,000 people paying nothing.

There are about 17,000 proceedings outstanding in the Circuit Court.

Brendan

There are two key questions here:

1) How many of these people have been determined unsustainable by the banks? I don't know if the banks themselves actually know?
2) More importantly what happens to people who can't pay? Where do they go? If you were faced with staying put and taking your chances in court or leaving the property now, with the residual balance still owing and facing into the social housing system what would you choose?

Interesting article by Charlie Taylor in Saturday's 'The Irish Times' entitled 'Low incomes and divorce drives arrears'.
It quotes some of the findings of the Central Bank's research into long term arrears.

'It says unemployment shocks, changes in mortgage affordability, the accumulation of non-mortgage debt, higher originating loan to loan to value ratios and weak housing equity positions have all played a part in contributing to long term arrears'.

'borrowers with long-term mortgage arrears typically face higher interest rates and are composed of what the authors call 'vulnerable family types' such as single borrowers with mulitple children'.

'Households in long-term arrears are shown to have experienced far more severe negative shocks during the crisis period, leading to much more onerous repayment burdens'.

'Furthermore, these housholds have also taken on higher levels of non-mortgage debt and are experiencing weaker housing equity positions.'

The grim research findings put the facile and irrelevant 'red herring' argument concerning people in long term arrears 'paying nothing' into sharp relief.