Families lose homes in record 91 hearings
A total of 91 cases were listed for hearing, a record number and sign of the spiralling numbers of housing debt problems coming before the courts.
The packed courtroom heard in one case how a mother and daughter were unable to hold onto the family home over a debt of €85,000 to lender Start Mortgages.
The Wexford family had remortgaged their Enniscorthy property for the funds in mid-2007 to help pay off a string of debts to other lenders. But Start told the court that the family were facing arrears of nearly €20,000 on the loan and that it was “an unfortunate case, they have absolutely no ability to repay.”
In another case the same lender was granted possession of a separate Wexford home from a widow.
The court heard how the husband had died just after the lender began proceedings against the couple.
The husband and wife had originally borrowed €290,000 in 2006 for their family home but arrears of around €69,000 were now due on the property after repayments stopped altogether last year.
Judge Elizabeth Dunne said it was a “sad case” but noted the arrears in general had begun mounting up over a year and a half ago.
She granted a four month stay on the repossession order.
In total, nearly half or 42 of the 91 cases listed yesterday were for proceedings taken by sub-prime lender Start Mortgages.
In a separate case, Anglo Irish Bank was granted repossession of three south Dublin properties over failures to repay a commercial mortgage loan.
At one stage, the borrower had owed nearly €4.8 million to the bank and sold one property in Ballsbridge for €2.2m to help reduce the loan.
The remaining three homes in Rathgar, Dartry and Kilternan were taken by the bank yesterday.
In total, 10 repossession orders (eight of which were family homes) were granted at the High Court yesterday.
One lucky family were given a last chance to arrange their finances over repaying an original €473,000 mortgage.
The husband had lost his dairy farm business and the couple still had three children under 10 years of age.
But Judge Dunne decided to allow them to continue just paying €600 back a month.
The Roscommon family were given another month to reorganise their finances and then have their case brought before the courts again.
