Mortgage Arrears in Ireland

by John O' Connor / Monday, 29 August 2011 / Published in Mortgage Interest Relief

Home Mortgage Arrears Cases Rise Again

Holding on to your home

Really was astonished at the latest report on mortgage arrears cases in ireland by the independent.ie today. We’ve had a lot of talk lately on ‘debt forgiveness’ for home owners recently – Todays reports really brings home how common and pervasive the problem in. For example:

More than 55,000 home owners are more than 3 months behind in making their mortgage payments. That’s 7% of all people with home mortgages

Over 39,000 have avoided going into arrears by restructuring their home mortgages, many of these are now on interest only mortgages i.e. not paying any part of their mortgage loan back.

Between those in arrears and those restructing their mortgages, that’s over 11% of all irish home mortgages holders (777,000 residential mortgage holders per Irish Times)

How it affects our work

Beyond the well covered consequences, the current mortgage debt crisis will affect work and the approach to it for a lot of people.
For example, it’s limiting people in the jobs they take. For instance if you need a €60,000 a year job to service your mortgage and live on, you can’t take a €40,000 job – and be committed to it and happy in it. Following the construction collapse in this country, those are the type of earnings drops we are seeing here.

Tagged under: mortgage arrears, mortgage default, mortgage Ireland