IBF conference on the mortgage market - conference papers

Hi Brendan,

I see from David Duffy's presentation in the slide entitled "private sector credit" that total mortgages have declined from €121 billion in January 2008 to €80 billion in January 2011.

In that same period there were new mortgages issued, albeit modest volumes. I don't know much - €5 billion? So he's saying that as a country we paid down €45 billion in mortgage capital (not interest - just capital) in three years.

This doesn't look right to me. Anyone know how many mortgages there are in this country?
 
According to Ronan Lyons there are 777,000 residential mortgages in Ireland. So if I can get my number of zeros correct, David Duffy is saying that on average every mortgage in the country reduced the balance outstanding by around €58,000 in a three year period!

Just doesn't seem right to me, especially when you consider that as that particular three years wore on, more and more people were forced by circumstances to reduce their mortgage repayments and come to arrangements with their lenders.
 
Hi Liam

I was very surprised when I saw that table. I had assumed that I had misread it. At the Q&A session, I asked to see it again and Dr Duffy confirmed that mortgage credit outstanding had declined by €40 billion and he had "downloaded the figures from the Central Bank". I didn't have any figures to hand but I told him that he was wrong and that he was very wrong. He replied that he was simply making the point that we have a high savings ratio in Ireland. I replied that we may or may not have, but that this figure was not just out, but that it was way out. Someone else pointed out that he looking only at the loans on the banks' balance sheets and that the drop was due to securitisation.

Oddly enough, a few people told me afterwards that I was "a stickler for detail"! The suggestion that over three years we reduced the amount outstanding by 33% is not a small detail in my opinion.

Séamus Coffey has the correct figures here. The total outstanding has fallen by a very small amount.

I was very surprised when the IBF published the uncorrected slide on its website. I think that such a gross error, should be pointed out. Someone will come across it and perpetuate it.
 
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