Home Repossessions are down

Housing Minister John Healey today said that Government will keep help in place for struggling homeowners as new figures published today showed that repossessions court activity has dropped by over a third compared with 2008.

New figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders also released today show that repossessions in the last three months of 2009 were down by 13 per cent compared to the previous quarter, and 2 less than the same period in 2008.

The total repossessions for 2009 were 46,000 – 29,000 less than the 75,000 originally forecast. This is around half the rate of repossessions during the last recession, when over 75,000 households lost their home in 1991 alone.

The Minister welcomed the CML's conclusions that lower interest rates, greater lender forbearance and Government support had all helped more struggling families stay in their homes than previously predicted and that their original forecast of 53,000 repossessions in 2010 may be a little pessimistic.

Government has tightened the rules so that repossession is always the last resort and more than 330,000 households have benefited from help and advice with their mortgage over the past year.