One in three struggle with mortgage

Published Friday, 27 January 2012

One in three households in Northern Ireland are struggling to pay mortgages taken out between 2005 and 2010, according to a new report.

We’re sorry. This video is unavailable from your location.

The study, commissioned by debt charity Consumer Credit Counselling Service, said the problems are only going to get worse.

It revealed that NI has the highest level of mortgage difficulty in the UK for loans taken out in the five-year period.

Around a third of those families are now subject to payment problems - compared to one in five across the UK.

Local households were also judged to be "particularly vulnerable" to future financial shocks, with only a third of the region having a savings account.

Una Farrell from CCCS said: "There is a range of welfare benefit changes that are going to come into effect.

"Also once interest rates go up, and they will sooner or later go up, I think homeowners in particular in the province are going to struggle hugely."

The average NI household has "barely any cushion" against unforeseen financial events, and spends as much as 97% of weekly income.

Meanwhile the local demand for debt advice has rocketed by 80% between 2008 and 2010 - faster than any other UK region.

Comments

1 Comments

Subby HPC in Belfast wrote (114 days ago):

1 in 3 now eh? Just wait until the interest rates rise later this year, then you'll see some serious amounts of people in trouble mortgage-wise. Some of these people were foolhardy enough to believe the experts when buying a house in that "prices only ever go up" A little bit of work done online would have told you that the house bubble in N.I. was flawed and ready to pop...would they have listened? No probably not seeing the media hyped up the market....anyone that has bought a house since 2005 is now probably in negative equity given the near 50% fall in prices from peak 2007.