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The Repossessed | Tonight - ITV News
The Repossessed? ITV1 Thursday 4th August at 7.30pm
Tonight reporter Jonathan Maitland hears from homeowners affected by repossession, about the impact it has on their families and, ultimately, how it can be avoided.
It has been described as the most dramatic squeeze on family finances since the 1920s. Households already facing a grim cocktail of soaring inflation, tax rises and stagnant wage growth are set for the next financial blow – an interest rate rise. Once they hit it has been predicted we will face the next housing crisis – a tsunami of repossessions as millions struggle to stay in their homes.
180,000 families are already in arrears and another 300,000 have switched to interest only mortgages to keep payments down. But when interest rates start to go up as they inevitably will, so will those mortgage payments.
The Chief Executive of housing charity Shelter tells the programme: “We should absolutely brace ourselves for a significant rise in repossessions when interest rates go up. All of the evidence that we have about the amount of debt that people have got, the amount of credit cards they are using to pay their mortgages, means that as soon as interest rates go up, and we suspect that they will go up quite quickly and quite rapidly, means that people will really begin to struggle to pay their mortgages.”
Single Mum Sam Wilkes has a four month old baby boy and just two weeks to find forty thousand pounds or else her house will be repossessed. Her mortgage was linked to her business that fell foul of the credit crunch. She says “I blame myself obviously for doing it but at the time when I got the business loan, we weren’t in a recession everything was strong, we were doing really well. The business was running really well; so at the time, it was fine.”
She is now set to lose her home and has no where else to go and is frantically trying to sell her possessions to raise the cash – but time is running out. The programme follows her desperate plight.
On an average £150,000 mortgage an interest rate rise of 1% will cost £516 per year. That’s very bad news for the 22% who have reached their ‘affordability tipping point’ – where finances cannot be stretched any further to meet everyday living costs.
Repossessions are rising but not at the rate of the last recession in 1991 when 75,000 homes were repossessed. This is due to low interest rates and a plea from the government to lenders at the start of the banking crisis to keep families in their homes. We have an interesting situation whereby the government is asking lenders to exercise forbearance i.e. give people some leeway if they get into difficulties. But the FSA is saying to lenders be careful that you don’t exercise too much forbearance because that may store up problems for the future.
James and Beverley are a couple who know a thing or two about forbearance; in the last four years they have twice come perilously close to losing their home. They bought their three bed town house in Sittingbourne, Kent back in 2005 for £195,000, when property prices were booming. They secured the maximum mortgage available with interest only repayments, believing like many that they could cash in as house prices continued to rise. Both James and Beverley lost their jobs and quickly went into arrears. They have now both managed to secure short term contracts and are paying their mortgage and the arrears they accrued during that time, but that period of unemployment has left them under a lot of financial pressure. “I am trapped in this house. Say for at least ten years until the market prices improve my arrears go down and negative equity is diminished completely as well.”
Back in 2009 The Winfield family in Stoke were had their home repossessed.
It had been in Dianne Winfield’s family for over forty years and she was heartbroken at the prospect of leaving it forever.
“This house means so much because I’m in here and I’m happy basically because I can see myself when I was little, but it’s like your memories are really everything you know. playing in the front garden on your bike and things like that. Going on from here when we got married and the children, but the children have grown and it’s the only thing they know, the children only know this area.”
Two years later the family of five are happy living in their rented council house. Stephen Winfield says they’ve done their best to have a life after repossession. “I think what it is, is that we had gone through a dark patch, a dark time. I didn’t think that we’d see sunlight at the end of the tunnel out of all this and now you know, a couple of years on now, you look at that and you think you’d never ever get through it. Now we've moved on and we are starting to get through that and st
The Repossessed? ITV1 Thursday 4th August at 7.30pm
Tonight reporter Jonathan Maitland hears from homeowners affected by repossession, about the impact it has on their families and, ultimately, how it can be avoided.
It has been described as the most dramatic squeeze on family finances since the 1920s. Households already facing a grim cocktail of soaring inflation, tax rises and stagnant wage growth are set for the next financial blow – an interest rate rise. Once they hit it has been predicted we will face the next housing crisis – a tsunami of repossessions as millions struggle to stay in their homes.
180,000 families are already in arrears and another 300,000 have switched to interest only mortgages to keep payments down. But when interest rates start to go up as they inevitably will, so will those mortgage payments.
The Chief Executive of housing charity Shelter tells the programme: “We should absolutely brace ourselves for a significant rise in repossessions when interest rates go up. All of the evidence that we have about the amount of debt that people have got, the amount of credit cards they are using to pay their mortgages, means that as soon as interest rates go up, and we suspect that they will go up quite quickly and quite rapidly, means that people will really begin to struggle to pay their mortgages.”
Single Mum Sam Wilkes has a four month old baby boy and just two weeks to find forty thousand pounds or else her house will be repossessed. Her mortgage was linked to her business that fell foul of the credit crunch. She says “I blame myself obviously for doing it but at the time when I got the business loan, we weren’t in a recession everything was strong, we were doing really well. The business was running really well; so at the time, it was fine.”
She is now set to lose her home and has no where else to go and is frantically trying to sell her possessions to raise the cash – but time is running out. The programme follows her desperate plight.
On an average £150,000 mortgage an interest rate rise of 1% will cost £516 per year. That’s very bad news for the 22% who have reached their ‘affordability tipping point’ – where finances cannot be stretched any further to meet everyday living costs.
Repossessions are rising but not at the rate of the last recession in 1991 when 75,000 homes were repossessed. This is due to low interest rates and a plea from the government to lenders at the start of the banking crisis to keep families in their homes. We have an interesting situation whereby the government is asking lenders to exercise forbearance i.e. give people some leeway if they get into difficulties. But the FSA is saying to lenders be careful that you don’t exercise too much forbearance because that may store up problems for the future.
James and Beverley are a couple who know a thing or two about forbearance; in the last four years they have twice come perilously close to losing their home. They bought their three bed town house in Sittingbourne, Kent back in 2005 for £195,000, when property prices were booming. They secured the maximum mortgage available with interest only repayments, believing like many that they could cash in as house prices continued to rise. Both James and Beverley lost their jobs and quickly went into arrears. They have now both managed to secure short term contracts and are paying their mortgage and the arrears they accrued during that time, but that period of unemployment has left them under a lot of financial pressure. “I am trapped in this house. Say for at least ten years until the market prices improve my arrears go down and negative equity is diminished completely as well.”
Back in 2009 The Winfield family in Stoke were had their home repossessed.
It had been in Dianne Winfield’s family for over forty years and she was heartbroken at the prospect of leaving it forever.
“This house means so much because I’m in here and I’m happy basically because I can see myself when I was little, but it’s like your memories are really everything you know. playing in the front garden on your bike and things like that. Going on from here when we got married and the children, but the children have grown and it’s the only thing they know, the children only know this area.”
Two years later the family of five are happy living in their rented council house. Stephen Winfield says they’ve done their best to have a life after repossession. “I think what it is, is that we had gone through a dark patch, a dark time. I didn’t think that we’d see sunlight at the end of the tunnel out of all this and now you know, a couple of years on now, you look at that and you think you’d never ever get through it. Now we've moved on and we are starting to get through that and st
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