Although Charlie Weston at the Independent said that the information would be published by the Fianna Fail appointed Financial Regulator last week, it is only today that the arrears/repossession information for Q4, 2010 has been published. Here’s the summary together with data for previous quarters.
(Click to enlarge)
In summary, arrears are up by 10% from Q3, 2010 which is down very slightly from the 11% rise in arrears between Q2 and Q3, 2010. Arrears over 180 days are up 12% quarter upon quarter. Overall arrears are up 56% on Q4, 2009. In addition to arrears, the Financial Regulator has reported for the first time that some 35,205 mortgages have been restructured and are performing. We do not have up to date information on mortgage interest social welfare payments. But overall we can see that 5.7% of mortgages are in arrears and 10.1% are in arrears/restructured. The last estimate I saw of social welfare payments of mortgages was at 16,000 which if still current might indicate some 12% of mortgages experiencing some difficulty.
Repossessions remain low at 106 for Q4, 2010. Ireland’s repossession rate is incredibly low given its 13.4% unemployment rate, the average 39% drop from peak in house prices, interest rate rises and generally challenging economic conditions.
NAMA Wine Lake 
Hi NAMA Wine Lake, and congratulations on your excellent blog. I was wondering, just out of curiosity, if it’s possible to find out how many of the 787,500 mortgages were taken out between 2004 and 2008. If, say, 200,000 mortgages (and that’s just pulled out of my hat) were issued in this period, and most of the 44,000+ people in arrears are post-2003 buyers, this would mean that nearly 25% of post-2003 buyers are in arrears, even before Budget 2011 hit their pay packets. If this information is already out there, I’d be curious to see it.
Hi Jonathan, if you take a look at the subsequent entry today dealing with mortgages data (link below) you can see the number of mortgages issued by IBF members (representing more than 95% of the mortgage market). A quick sum on the old spreadsheet shows that between Q1,05 – Q4,08 inclusive, there were 359,095 new mortgages for property purchase. Bear in mind the following:
(1) IBF numbers don’t go back to 2004
(2) There were 145k mover mortgages and some of these may have involved a redemption of another mortgage granted in the period.
https://namawinelake.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/mortgage-market-freezes-up-in-q4-2010/
Thanks, I hadn’t seen the new post when I left that comment.