Daft Property - Irish Property News

Repossessions occur almost on daily basis, says regulator... Level of arrears doubles in 15 months THE homes of 331 people have been repossessed this year -- almost one a day -- and a further 26,271 mortgage holders are three months or longer behind in their mortgage repayments. This means the percentage of households falling into arrears has more than doubled in the last 15 months, new figures from the Financial Regulator show. But mortgage experts accused the regulator last night of down-playing the extent of the mortgage crisis. They said the figures take no account of the thousands of homeowners who have got permission from their lenders for a payment holiday or are now only paying the interest on their mortgage in a bid to lower the repayments. The figures show that the State's 22 mortgage lenders held a total of 331 repossessed homes by the end of September. In the three months from June to September alone 110 properties were repossessed. Included in the 331 repossessed prope...

Pressure on State to stop repossession of homes... There is a "substantial" number of new mortgage holders who should never have been approved for the amount of money they borrowed and repossession orders should not be granted to their lenders, proposals to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and the Oireachtas committee have urged. A group, whose aim is finding a way to assist thousands of families who face the "very real threat" of losing their homes because of mortgage arrears, said the terms of loans should be amended to what the borrower can afford. The Prevention of Family Home Repossession Group has made submissions to Mr Lenihan and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and Public Service on a variety of measures to deal with the problem. They have also warned that many families will find themselves in a poverty trap with a deteriorating economy, spiralling unemployment and the prospect of interest rate rises . "This has the potential to lead to catastro...

Homeowners handing their houses back to the banks... HOMEOWNERS who can no longer afford to pay the mortgage are voluntarily giving up the keys to their property as they see no other way out of the debt , according to a housing charity. Respond warned that many people in negative equity did not think it was worth trying to sell the house to repay the debt as there was no market for it. These people are simply handing their houses back to the banks, the charity said, with some leaving the country and others moving back home with family. Respond spokeswoman Aoife Walsh said figures for repossessions in the courts did not accurately reflect what is happening on the ground. "Many people are feeling hopeless because of the collapse of the housing market. They are simply handing back the keys of their home to their lender as there is no prospect of selling the home to repay the debt," she said. "These cases are rarely reported and we suspect there may be far more ‘voluntary su...

Families set to be ‘robbed’ of their homes... AN avalanche of repossessions "robbing" cash-strapped families of their homes will follow the creation of NAMA, opposition leaders have warned. Fine Gael and Labour joined forces to plead with Finance Minister Brian Lenihan to launch a rescue lifeline package for people falling behind with mortgages as the controversial NAMA legislation was pushed through the Dáil. Labour finance spokesperson Joan Burton predicted "reckless lenders" were only holding off on going after families in financial difficulties until they had secured the €54bn deal from the State to take toxic developer loans off their hands. "Ordinary families will be leeched by the banks and building societies as soon as they get the NAMA money. They pushed money at people at the height of the boom and now will go after them to get it back." Ms Burton said a 24-month moratorium should be extended to householders with problems who were trying to deal ...

25,000 families now face losing their homes FEAR: No more breathing space on mortgages... UP TO 25,000 home owners face the chilling prospect of having their homes repossessed because they have fallen significantly behind on mortgage repayments. Irish Life & Permanent (IL&P), which has a 25pc share of the home mortgage market, has confirmed that 6,122 loans are now three months or more in arrears and it is estimated that up to another 20,000 mortgage holders with other lending institutions are in a similar position. Under the State bailout arrangement, banks had agreed to give all mortgage customers one year's breathing space before repossessing. But, for many, that deadline is now imminent. New legal orders coming in to effect on October 1 will make it easier for District Courts to grant uncontested repossessions, which is likely to increase the number of homes being taken over by banks. Under the same act, contested repossession cases will be heard in the Circuit Court ra...

What happens if you voluntarily surrender your home? If the sale doesn't cover the mortgage you could be in trouble... One of the unspoken legacies of this recession will be the hundreds of people left paying full-term mortgages on properties they no longer own having been forced to sell at massive losses by the threat of repossession. With the 12-month moratorium on repossessions agreed as part of the government's recapitalisation programme for the Bank of Ireland and AIB and political pressure generally, the prime lenders are reluctant to be seen opting to force people out of their homes. However, it's understood that many are opting to give customers in serious financial difficulty six months to sell their property despite the fact that they are almost certainly going to do so at a significant loss. That this option avoids the repossession process is almost irrelevant to the mortgage holder because the end result is the same – the customer is left with a potentially huge...

Underwater mortgages: a guide to survival... Latest estimates suggest that as many as 340,000 home-owners, or one in five homes, are stuck in negative equity... HINDSIGHT IS a wonderful thing. Looking back at the prices people paid for Irish property during the boom, it’s easy to see how unsustainable they were. However at the time, despite warnings from everyone from the Central Bank to the Economist magazine that Ireland’s property market was a bubble which had to burst, banks and consumers ignored the advice and ploughed money into property, propping up prices until the inevitable collapse during 2008. Now, latest estimates suggest that as many as 340,000 home owners, or one in five homes, are stuck in negative equity and prices are still sliding . If this is the case, then people who purchased property as far back as 2003 with loan-to-values (LTVs) of more than 80 per cent, will discover that they owe more to the bank than what their house is worth. For example, at the peak of the ...

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...