Daft Property - Irish Property News

Struggling homeowners turn to SVP... Under-pressure homeowners are using every last cent to pay their mortgage bills, leaving them so short of cash they are turning to the Society of St Vincent de Paul for extra money to buy food and pay utility bills. In the capital, St Vincent de Paul volunteers dealt with a massive 10,000 calls in the first four months of this year -- up 30 per cent on 2009. Now they fear there will be a further raft of people in trouble with their mortgages when redundancy payments given to people who lost their jobs last year run out. According to ratings agency Moody's, the number of Irish people who have fallen behind in their mortgage repayments has come close to doubling in the last 12 months. The rate of delinquency in mortgage repayments -- those with more than 90 days of mortgage arrears -- rose to 3.8 per cent in March up from 2.1 per cent during the same month last year. According to John Monaghan of the St Vincent de Paul Society, more and more peopl

1,000 a month seek help to pay mortgage... MORE than 1,000 people a month are turning to the Government for help to pay their mortgages. But as many as half of them are being turned down some months. The dramatic rise in the numbers who cannot afford to meet their monthly mortgage repayments has underlined the scale of the crisis affecting a growing number of desperate homeowners. The mortgage interest relief supplement is designed to cover the interest portion of the home loan. Those seeking aid have to show they negotiated to reschedule the mortgage payments with their lender. They also have to be means tested. And both husband and wife must be out of work. The increase in applications comes at a time when mortgage interest rates are at record lows. Expected rises in the next year are likely to push substantially more people to the financial brink. Figures obtained by the Irish Independent reveal that the Government expects to have to spend €60m this year helping homeowners to pay th

Thousands seeking help as debts surge... THE number of people turning to a Government money advice service to save themselves from financial ruin will double this year. In response, the Government has been forced to hire a new team of advisers to bolster the under-staffed Money Advice and Budgeting Service (MABS). Despite the public sector recruitment ban, the Department of Finance has given the green light for a team of new recruits. The extent of indebtedness emerged as it was revealed that up to 500 ESB and Bord Gais customers were being disconnected every month because they could not afford to pay their bills. Stark new Department of Social and Family Affairs figures reveal: * The MABS helpline received more than 12,200 calls in the first six months of 2009. This compares with almost 11,000 for all of last year. * MABS staff have been visited by almost 10,000 new clients -- owing an average of €15,100 -- since the beginning of the year. * The vast majority of the debt (65p

Record increase in families fighting to save home... REPOSSESSION orders sought by banks and mortgage lenders soared by more than 100pc last year in the wake of the downturn. According to figures complied by the Courts Service, 758 new applications for possession orders were brought to the High Court in 2008 -- compared to 374 the previous year. The increase is the largest ever recorded by the courts and points to aggressive tactics deployed by some lenders to recover their debts. Many of the applications were from subprime lenders, such as Start Mortgages, but there were also from major banks such as AIB and Bank of Ireland. In the past six months of 2008 the High Court received 505 applications -- compared with 253 at the start of the year. However it was the final quarter of last year, when the country was hit by massive job losses, which saw applications gain momentum. Between October and December 294 applications were brought by lenders -- compared to just 96 during the same perio