Fears of surge in home loan defaults

FEARS over mass mortgage defaults and the viability of the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) intensified last night amid shock new warnings that the property market has much further to fall.

In a severe blow to hopes the crash was beginning to stabilise, a High Court judge said he was dealing with 70%-80% slumps in commercial property values “on a daily basis”.

This was seized upon by opposition parties, who said it made a mockery of Government estimates that only 20% of the €54 billion worth of toxic loans soaked up by taxpayers via NAMA would default because the price of development land will increase by 10% over the next decade.