120 families a day lose their home as repossessions rocket by 70%

The number of families evicted from their homes has rocketed by 70 per cent over the last year, official figures revealed yesterday. 

Experts warned that repossessions will keep rising as Britain is plunged into a recession. 

Between April and June, around 120 families were thrown out of their homes every single day after losing the battle to pay their mortgage.   

Some 11,054 people had their homes repossessed, compared with just 6,476 during the same period last year - a rise of more than 70 per cent.

Worryingly, the grim statistics from the Financial Services Authority - a City watchdog - date from the period before the economic crisis escalated.

The economic turbulence this autumn has been described by the Bank of England's deputy governor Charlie Bean as the 'largest financial crisis of its kind in human history'.

This has led to fears that the next round of repossession figures will be far worse.

The number of home-owners who are on the verge of being thrown out on to the street is also rising, as more fall behind with their mortgage repayments.



The FSA said 312,332 people failed to pay their mortgages between April and June, up 16 per cent on the same period last year.

Adam Sampson, chief executive of the Shelter housing charity, said: 'These figures are not only shocking and worse than expected, they highlight the cripplingseverity of the credit crunch on ordinary home-owners.'

The charity is calling on the City watchdog to 'start using its teeth' to stop lenders rushing to court to repossess homes.

The Government is also putting pressure on the banks to treat repossession as a 'last resort'.

Under new rules, banks must be able to prove that they tried everything to help owners get their finances back on track before resorting to repossession.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable said: 'The collapsing housing bubble will produce large numbers of casualties, as people fall into arrears unable to sustain mortgage payments.

'If conditions deteriorate further, the current stream of repossessions will become a torrent.'

Figures from the Land Registry, the most reliable source of house price information, were also released yesterday. These showed that prices are collapsing at a record rate.

The figures revealed that over the last year, average house prices have dropped eight per cent - the biggest fall since the Registry's records began in 1995. The average price of a home is now £168,814.

Every day, thousands of homeowners are being plunged into negative equity - when the size of your mortgage is bigger than the value of your home.

In England, the worst-hit area is the East Midlands. The scale of the decline in the region is shocking, with prices plunging around £13,500 in the nine months since January to an average of £133,175.

Howard Archer, an economist at the consultancy Global Insight, said: 'The fundamentals continue to be largely stacked against the housing market, and it seems odds-on that prices will fall considerably further.'

The Land Registry figures also showed that the number of sellers was down by nearly 60 per cent in July compared with the previous year.

Just 49,784 homes were sold that month in England and Wales, the smallest number since February 1996. Separate figures showed that the number of mortgage deals available for people with only a 5 per cent deposit fell by nearly 50 per cent during the past week.

There are now just 40 home loans available for people borrowing up to 95 per cent of a home's value, down from 75 just a week ago.

The figures, from the Moneyfacts.co.uk website, suggest that banks are tightening their lending criteria again - despite the recent help offered to the sector by the Government.  continues here

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