Friday, August 8, 2008

Repossessions increase 41 percent

The Financial Services Agency have just begun to collect and publish data on UK mortgage activity. You would think that they would have started collecting these numbers the moment they assumed responsibility for overseeing the UK financial system. Well, better late than never.

The FSA did, however, make quite a splash in the world of economic data. Their numbers on home repossessions were positively ugly. Overall, repossessions are up 41 percent.

7 comments:

  1. Alice,

    The CML have been doing this for years.

    They released the most recent figures which were strangely similar in percentage to the FSA figures, but vastly difference in actual numbers.

    I presume there is a good reason for this?

    Andy

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  2. Are those numbers thousands per day, week, month, quarter, year?

    Given the state of play, even 10,000 reposessions per month seems small to me... 10,000 per quarter would suggest that we've not seen anything yet!

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  3. You have to be very careful to distinguish between repossession orders and actual repossessions. Only about 1-in-3 orders becomes an actual repossession.

    But as 300,000 borrowers are three or more months repayments in arrears, there's plenty more to come.

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  4. asteve, as mark suggests, the arrears data is a lot more complicated that it first appears. The FSA data covers repossessions. I will have to check, but it is new repossessions per quarter. Therefore, if you add up over a year, a large number of people are losing their homes.

    The CML data, as Andy points out, have been producing numbers for years. However, their numbers are annual and half year. I have those numbers, and I am trying to make sense of them. They mostly cover varioud definitions of arrears, rather than repossessions.

    Having said all that, the overall story is very clear. The numbers are going up.

    Alice

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  5. I understand - though, from another perspective with ~25m homes, even if 40,000 are repossessed, this is only 0.16% of home owners. I'd not be surprised by a figure ten times that.

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  6. I am surprised the FSA hasn't had their repo numbers manipulated to look better than they really are... just like the "official" (=bullshit) government inflation figures.
    They could exclude houses with 2 bedrooms or ones where the bathroom faces south... yes crazy I know... but don't underestimate the gall of New Labour's spin doctors...
    Oh dear I have just given those clowns an idea !!!

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  7. The Financial Services Agency have just begun to collect and publish data on UK mortgage activity.I have those numbers, and I am trying to make sense of them. They mostly cover various definitions of arrears, rather than repossessions.
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    steve
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