Long-term mortgage arrears - they haven't gone away you know...

From today's IT:

"In spite of the reduction in the number of owner-occupied homes in mortgage arrears of 90 days or more – down 3.6 per cent to 57,571 – the percentage of these in long-term arrears, by value, has increased.

At the end of the second quarter of this year, some €7.82 billion of total arrears was more than 720 days past due. That represented 68 per cent of the €11.5 billion of mortgage arrears more than 90 days outstanding. In the previous quarter, the figure was just under 67 per cent. And while 812 mortgage accounts moved out of the 720 days past-due category – through one means or another – the total arrears on this cohort of defaulted home loans increased by just under €33 million.

This has been the trend over five successive quarters.

On average, the near 35,000 families who were two years or more behind with their payments owed €61,159 in arrears on their home loans at the end of June. The average balance outstanding on their mortgages was €223,789.

We know from data previously supplied to the Department of Finance by the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland that in 40 per cent of long-term mortgage arrears cases, people hadn’t engaged with their lenders."

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/...timebomb-long-term-mortgage-arrears-1.2860045

It may well be that "no veto" Personal Insolvency Arrangements could be successfully used by many in long term arrears.

The figures are truly truly shocking. But as Hancock bluntly points out

Repossessions aren’t part of Irish culture

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Another part of Irish culture that badly needs changing

He goes on to say

At the end of June, the number of repossessed homes being held by the banks amounted to 1,683. This figure doesn’t change hugely from quarter to quarter. In the year to the end of June 2016, 609 homes had been repossessed on foot of a court order. Most of the homes that end up with the banks are either voluntarily surrendered or abandoned.
Selling loans to vulture funds would be politically explosive for [broken link removed] and [broken link removed], both of which are majority State owned. But they can’t keep kicking the can down the road, either.
There’s no obvious or easy solution to the problem. The domestic banks, which have been bailed out by taxpayers, can’t simply write off billions in loans.

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TLO said:

It may well be that "no veto" Personal Insolvency Arrangements could be successfully used by many in long term arrears.

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That may well be true but there were only 45 court applications during the first 6 months of the removal of the banks' "veto" on personal insolvency deals. That number may well pick up now that legal aid is available for these applications but I remain sceptical that this review facility will have a material impact on the numbers in long-term arrears.

It really is beyond time that the long-term arrears figure started to fall in a meaningful way.

Sarenco said:

From today's IT:

"In spite of the reduction in the number of owner-occupied homes in mortgage arrears of 90 days or more – down 3.6 per cent to 57,571 – the percentage of these in long-term arrears, by value, has increased.

At the end of the second quarter of this year, some €7.82 billion of total arrears was more than 720 days past due....

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Does anyone know what "figures published this week by the Central Bank" the article is actually referring to? The arrears referred to in the main part of the article after paragraph three are the Q2 arrears statistics published on September 13th. It takes the CB ten weeks after the end of the quarter to compile them, and apparently it takes the Irish Times another eight weeks to notice them! I presume the household debt figures are also from the first half of the year.

Here's a graphical visualisation of the CB figures I did about six weeks ago, if anyone's interested -- click on the picture for an interactive version with more stats on both number and value of mortgages in arrears.

Pretty sure the article is referring to the Household Credit Market Report published on 7 November 2016 (see figure 24 on page 17):-

[broken link removed]

Ok, gotcha, that looks like it, thanks.That report is labelled "H2" but the various figures are a mixture of Q1, Q2, and Q3 numbers. The mortgage arrears figures are indeed the Q2 figures from the other report I mentioned above, issued on 13-Sep.