08 Apr House Repossessions Fall
House Repossessions Fall
The last resort for any lender is repossession, they will work with you to resolve the issue and if they feel that there is no other avenue to go down they will apply for a repossession order.
What we suggest at Home House Buyers is to come to some sort of agreement whether that’s a payment plan or to sell your property to clear the debt, the repossession process can be messy and will affect your ability to get another mortgage in the future.
How Long Does it Take to Complete a Mortgage Repossession?
According to stats taken from the government website, it takes around 20 weeks or 5 months for a court to issue a repossession claim in favour of a company or your lender. It’ll take between 85-90 weeks for the court to issue a warrant after the repossession order has been made. It’ll take over 100 weeks for the repossession to take effect and in essence to complete, so roughly the whole process for a lender to complete a repossession takes almost 2 years.
Historical Year on Year Data
Year on year house repossessions fluctuate on a regular basis, the changes that occur aren’t easy to predict. The rise of repossessions seems to be connected to major economic and political events. For example, the 2007-2008 global financial crisis had a significant impact on the housing market.
How Many Repossessions Occurred Before and During the 2007/2008 Financial Crisis?
Historical data shows that from 1995 to 2007 -2008 financial crisis that arrears on mortgage payments declined. From that point on after 2008 the number of borrowers who were in arrears increased and hit a peak in 2009.
According to data acquired by the housing charity Shelter, house repossessions accounted for 0.52 per cent of all mortgages in 2009. This high was a massive increase from the 0.07 per cent seen in 2003-2004, which accounted for 49,000 houses being taken possession of.
How Many Repossessions in 2015?
The repossession hotspot which was the city of Bolton set the record for house repossessions since 2004. Sunderland, Manchester and 3/4 of all Northern cities but Bolton was the standout place which had the highest rate of repossessions well above the national average.
This said 2015 was a very interesting year as the gap between the North and the South on repossession statistics narrowed dramatically. This might be due to the fact house repossessions across England have decreased, the North still lead the way by a significant amount. Over recent years the plague of repossessions which spread across London boroughs decreased also in 2015 for the first time in almost 5 years.
How Many Repossessions in 2016 and Beyond?
The data which we have observed in 2015 were in our opinion down to factors implemented in the mortgage sector such as more stringent guidelines when lending which took into account the affordability factor for these mortgage applications. The government also made efforts to bolster the housing sector by introducing schemes such as the ‘Help to Buy’ and ‘shared equity’.
We predict that some of these housing initiatives will take time to bed in and take effect. The buy-to-let sector has taken a massive negative impact with new tax changes for landlords and the new stamp duty laws which came into effect in 2016. As in other years interest rates if they rise which is more than likely will prove challenging for borrowers.
Mortgage arrears also continued to fall throughout 2016, there is still a disparity between buy-to-let landlords and homeowners being repossessed. Lenders are more inclined to help homeowners avoid repossession than buy-to-let landlord which they are more aggressive in trying to take possession.
Employment factors in regional areas have seen rises in repossessions, areas in South Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of England have been hit with the decline of the steel industry which has seen job losses which have resulted in people falling behind with their mortgage payments.