New mortgage arrears data shows intensification of problems

May 19, 2011 by namawinelake

This morning, the Financial Regulator Matthew Elderfield released the mortgage arrears data for quarter one of 2011 together with enhanced information on restructured mortgages. The headline is that mortgage arrears are still rising and the pace is increasing slightly. Here’s the data together with as much historical data as is available:

(Click to enlarge)

In short arrears are up more than 10% relative to the previous quarter and up 55% compared with quarter one of 2010. Some 6.34% of all mortgages are over 90 days in arrears and the pace of increase is increasing slightly (the total in arrears increased by 0.68% in Q1, 2011, 0.53% in Q4,2010, 0.513% in Q3,2010). Repossessions in the quarter were at their highest level since these current records began but at 140 are still minute compared to other jurisdictions eg US and UK – forbearance measures by banks and our lack of a modern bankruptcy mechanism might the reasons for this low statistic. The restructured mortgage data is new and I extract here the table from the report published today:

Of interest is that not one mortgage that has been restructured, has been a tracker where the borrower has been forced to take a standard or other mortgage product as a condition of a restructuring agreement. Or if that isn’t the case, the Financial Regulator hasn’t deemed it noteworthy to include such a heading. The under-reported scandal of banks being able to strong-arm vulnerable mortgage holders into surrendering valuable tracker mortgages for standard variable mortgages as a condition of agreement to any restructure has long been a bug-bear on here.

Also it is not quite clear how many restructured mortgages are included in the arrears figures. The report indicates that there are presently 62,936 restructured mortgages and of these 36,662 are not in arrears indicating that 26,274 are in arrears, though some of these may be less than 90 days in arrears.

So if you were to ask the question “how many mortgages are in some difficulty today?”, you’d have to add the arrears of 90 days+ (49,609) to some restructured mortgages (at least 36,662) to give you at least 86,271 or 11% of the total mortgage book. There are reportedly some 16,000 mortgages in receipt of some form of State mortgage assistance, some of these may be included in the arrears/restructurings but some may not.

Source:http://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/new-mortgage-arrears-data-shows-intensification-of-problems/

Comment:

On the 8^th of November last Morgan Kelly warned of the upcoming mortgage default tsunami and I for one agree with him we ante seen nothing yet !

read his article here http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1108/1224282865400.html