Statistics from City watchdog the Financial Services Authority reveal some staggering figures regarding home repossessions.
Repossessions climbed by almost 100 per cent last year, with 13,161 families being evicted between June and September alone. This means that 1 family is being evicted every 10 minutes, after failing to keep up with mortgage payments on their homes.
Since September the situation has deteriorated even more, leaving still more people at risk of losing their homes. Rising livings costs, for example petrol, diesel, gas and electricity prices have put pressure on homeowners who were previously just making ends meet and as a result, they have got behind with mortgage and other credit commitments.
Figures show that mortgage arrears for some people are so serious that they represent more than 10 per cent of their total mortgage commitment, with up to 340,000 people behind with their mortgage payments. For many of these, unless they can find the money to bring debts up to date, repossession is almost a certainty.
With up to 85 companies going under every day, unemployment figures continue to rise. Even for those people in work, wages may be dropping as overtime and bonuses are cut as thousand of businesses both small and large struggle to survive. Every business that closes puts more people at risk of repossession. The Conservatives are warning that the current repossession figures are just the tip of the iceberg
Chief Executive of the housing charity Shelter, says that these figures must not just be regarded as numbers on a balance sheet. Each one represents a real family, facing the heartbreak of being evicted from their home and he says that the proposed Government measures will only help a fraction of those people in real need.
For those families who do lose their homes, there appears to be very little light at the end of the tunnel, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government. They say they will do everything possible to help to protect homeowners, including the Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme, which will allow people with mortgages of up to 400,000 pounds to defer the interest on them for up to 2 years. Unfortunately, there is no date set for the introduction of the scheme, and full details have not yet been finalised. The Council of Mortgage Lenders predicts that figures will rise to close on record levels this year, with up to 75,000 homes being repossessed.
The Conservative housing spokesman commented that the Labour Government had sat back while council house waiting lists had exploded and that Gordon Brown’s boast that he had ended boom and bust would not provide much comfort for all the families repossessed last summer. He also thinks repossessions will continue to rise since the banking crisis in the latter part of the year.
The Liberal Democrat spokeswoman commented that the sad fact is that the number of people with mortgage arrears continues to grow, and will get worse . Figures suggest that with approximately 4.2 million people (a record 1.8 million families) on council waiting lists an increase of 10,000 over the last year demand for social housing far outstrips supply.
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