Court grants repossession of family homes

THREE family homes were repossessed by lenders in the Dublin High Court yesterday.

Presiding Judge Elizabeth Dunne granted possession to lenders of six properties whose owners had fallen into substantial mortgage arrears.

The properties repossessed included a buy-to-let property in Dublin where €58,810 arrears had accumulated on a €296,000 loan from Stepstone Mortgages. Another mortgage for €360,000 had gone into immediate arrears with €51,300 now outstanding, equalling 38 months of default.

In the case of a businessman who had accumulated arrears of €30,000 since December 2008 on a €200,000 mortgage, Justice Dunne granted a three- month adjournment due to the current illness of the defendant.

She said that during this period a “viable plan” must be presented to the lender to show how the arrears could be met. The defendant barrister said that once his client was well enough to return to work he had committed to meeting the arrears and continue to pay the interest on the loan.

The further repossessions came as housing agency Respond reacted to the various proposals put forward by the political parties to deal with the mortgage arrears crisis.

Respond spokeswoman Aoife Walsh said: “For far too long in this country a market approach to housing was adopted where profit was the ultimate objective, achieved through speculation and investment.”

It is estimated that this housing policy has resulted in around 100,000 people being in mortgage arrears.

“This is a sizeable group of people. For this group, the mortgage is like a noose around their neck and looks to get tighter with increasing interest rates and decreasing wages. All the political parties make promises to assist this group, though in the case of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party it is simply a case of supporting the recommendations of an Expert Group on Mortgage Arrears and Personal Debt that published its final report in November 2010,” Ms Walsh said.

“The thorny issue of ghost estates is addressed by all parties with the exception of Fianna Fáil. They all commit to dealing with the problem, completing the estates and holding developers to account but none actually let us know how they will do it. Of course the elephant in the room is how exactly all of this construction work will be funded and only time will tell what role the advisory group on unfinished developments will play in all of this.”