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What everyone at risk of home repossession needs to know!
Forex Trading Explained.
DrForex's top selling forex book Bird Watching in Lion Country - Forex Trading Explained in e-format.
Author: sam lowe Article source: http://www.articlealley.com/. Used with author's permission.
Anyone who owned property during the last house price crash in the early 1990s will remember constant headlines about negative equity and home repossession. Between 1990 and 1996 over a million individuals experienced mortgage repossession as they struggled with mortgage payments when interest rates doubled.
A lot has changed since then. The U.K. economy is much more stable, we live in a low-inflation environment and the Chancellor's decision to pass responsibility for setting interest rates to the Bank of England is acclaimed by many as a master stroke. So, not much chance of a repeat of the early 90s misery, then?
"It's different this time" has been the downfall of many a pundit, whether they are referring to stocks and shares, the housing market, or anything else. Because whilst there are certainly many differences between now and the early nineties, dig a bit deeper and there are quite a few signs that everything in the garden might not be as rosy as we would all like it to be.
Take household debt for example, now at over £1 trillion. Or to put it another way, around £17,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in the UK! The Nationwide Building Society recently calculated that debt is now at a record 2.75 times disposable income compared with the previous record of two times income in the early 1990s.
Or interest rates. They may be low - but the five successive interest rate rises last year actually equated to a 35% increase! As rising house prices in recent years have encouraged many people to take out the biggest mortgage they can get, this type of increase will have been very unwelcome!
Or employment. A record 28.3 million people are in jobs. However many of these are part-time or short-term contracts. Many more have benefited through the massive increase in public sector employment. But if the economy wobbles, and particularly if as many predict the government needs to reduce public spending, these jobs are vulnerable.
So maybe it's not so surprising that figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders show that the number of home repossessions increased by a whopping 70% in 2005 compared to 2004, with the trend looking set to continue this year.
If you are in danger of home repossession, or might be affected in the future, what should you do?
We asked Richard Watters, Managing Director of A Quick Sale Ltd. for his views as his company receives hundreds of calls each week from people worried about losing their home because of eviction as a result of home repossession by a mortgage lender. He suggested sticking to the following 10-point checklist:
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