Repo man: Taking back of property by lenders is an 'extreme measure'

REPOSSESSIONS BY prime lenders - banks that lend to customers with unblemished repayment records - remain low and there has been no significant spike in bad debts or mortgage arrears.

Permanent TSB, the State's largest mortgage lender, repossessed nine properties last year, Gillian Bowler, chairwoman of Irish Life Permanent, the bank's parent company, told its annual meeting last week. She said possessions had remained stable since 2006.

Bank of Ireland said at its annual results last week that it had "zero loan losses" on its Irish mortgages and did not expect any significant rise in mortgage bad debts. The bank said the quality of its home loans remained "excellent" and that its three-month arrears on mortgage repayments stood at 0.7 per cent of mortgages.

A report from ratings agency Standard Poor's this week showed that the number of UK mortgage delinquencies - defined as arrears of more than 30 days - on prime mortgages was 2.41 per cent for the first three months of this year.

Bank of Ireland's arrears of over one month on its UK mortgages, which make up 55 per cent of its mortgage book, was 1.2 per cent as of March 31st, 2008.

AIB chief executive Eugene Sheehy said at the bank's annual results in February that it had not started foreclosure proceedings on "one single customer".

A spokesman for the Irish Banking Federation said, according to data from mainstream lenders, 50 houses were repossessed in 2007, the same number as the previous year. He said repossession was "a last resort" once every option to repay had been exhausted. He said a repossessed property on the books of a bank tended to be more costly.