The number of properties repossessed by mortgage lenders rose by 12% to 11,300 in the third quarter of the year, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said.         

The number of borrowers in arrears also went up compared with the previous quarter, by 8% to 168,000.

The number of repossession orders made by the courts in England and Wales rose by 3% to 29,516 in the same period.

The figures suggest that many more people are likely to lose their homes as the economy falls into recession.

Worsening picture

CML director general Michael Coogan said its forecast for the year had not changed in the light of the figures, but it would be "premature" to predict what might happen in 2009.

He said it was not generally in lenders' interests to repossess properties and the government needed to play its part with measures to ease the situation in the Chancellor's Pre-Budget Report.

"Conditions in the wider economy suggest a worsening picture for mortgage arrears, however carefully lenders handle their treatment of borrowers in difficulty," he said.

"But while lenders cannot change the underlying causes of financial difficulty, such as unemployment, they can make sure that their response to borrowers is constructive and seeks to avoid repossession wherever other solutions can be found."

Buy-to-let

The CML figures suggest that life has suddenly become tougher for buy-to-let (BTL) landlords as arrears among them are now higher than among mortgage borrowers generally.

"Reasons include falling rents and an over-supply of rental property in some areas, resulting in some landlords being unable to let their property or achieve high enough rents to support their borrowing commitments," the CML explained.

"Fraud is also likely to have been a contributory factor," it added.

The figures show that 1.58% of BTL loans were behind with repayments in the third quarter of the year, compared with 1.44% of all mortgages.

However the number of BTL landlords who saw their properties repossessed was, at 900, just the same as in the first and second quarters of 2008.

They amounted to just 0.08% of all BTL mortgages, compared with the slightly higher repossession rate of 0.1% for all mortgages holders.

The CML warned though that this lower BTL repossession rate "is unlikely to be maintained".     

Source : bbcnews