NEW FIGURES RELEASED by the Department of Finance show that 71% of mortgages in long term arrears have not reached any agreement on managing their debt with their banks.
Despite the stubbornly high figure, the statistics do show an improvement in the overall situation, with the total number of mortgages in arrears of 90 days or greater falling from 79,782 to 72,897 over the first six months of the year.
However, the 52,023 mortgages not restructured remains a headache for both Government and lending institutions.
Of those with some solution in place, 15,022 have a permanent agreement with their lender, while 5,822 have only a place-holding temporary restructure in situ.
The most popular permanent mortgage solution remains arrears recapitalisation, which has been deployed in 21,333 instances.
However, split mortgages are also growing in popularity among lenders, with 14,158 now in place when compared to 6,239 at the end of 2014.
Buy to let
Long-term problem mortgages in the buy-to-let sector actually increased during June to stand at 26,698. There are more buy-to-let mortgages in arrears now than at the end of last year, when the figure stood at 26,494.
Commentators have criticised the apparent inability of lenders to deal with the issue of buy to let mortgages.
Trinity College Finance Professor told TheJournal.ie in June that the issue had been “left to fester” and that it was “inexcusable” that the problem with BTL mortgages hasn’t been solved.
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