Mortgage arrears up as loans crisis deepens

THE MORTGAGE arrears crisis is deepening Central Bank figures released yesterday show. The number of mortgages which are in arrears or have had to be restructured is now 15.2 per cent of the total residential market as of the end of March. This total is up from 14 per cent at the end of last year.

Nearly 78,000 mortgages were in arrears of 90 days or more at the end of March, an increase of nearly 8,000 over just three months.

The picture is gloomier when the value of the restructured mortgages or those in arrears is taken into account. At the end of March €21.7 billion in mortgage debt was either in arrears of more than 90 days or had been restructured. This is 19.2 per cent of the total residential mortgage debt. At the end of December this figure was 17.7 per cent while three months earlier it was 16 per cent.

The latest figures also show that 170 properties were repossessed during the first quarter of the year, an increase of 28 per cent from the final quarter of 2011. Of the repossessed houses, 65 were on foot of a court order, while 105 were voluntarily surrendered or abandoned. The banks now have 961 repossessed homes on their books.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said “people who are genuinely in distress and who cannot meet their mortgages” will get Government assistance. He said a Cabinet subcommittee would meet the banks next month, by which time the institutions will have submitted plans to the Financial Regulator on how to deal with mortgage arrears.