I’m old enough to remember both the 1980s and 1990s property crashes, and boy were they painful. Hundreds of thousands lost their homes, through no fault of their own.
In the early 1990s, around 1.5million fell into negative equity, and were trapped there for several years. So are we going to go through all that pain again?
The mortgage crunch is certainly going to hurt. Some 2.5million homeowners will see their low-cost fixed rate mortgages expire over the next 18 months, and face paying hundreds of pounds extra every month as a result.
That soon adds up at a time when they are already squeezed by the cost-of-living crisis and soaring tax bills.
With the Bank of England expected to continue hiking base rates, mortgages could peak at seven percent or eight percent.
That is well below the early 1990s, when they touched 15 percent, but the difference today is that buyers have been forced to borrow more to keep pace with sky-high prices.
This leaves them more vulnerable. One expert forecasts house prices will drop by 35 percent.
Yet one thing is better this time. In past crises, banks and building societies were quick to repossess. Today, they will be more patient.
The Government is putting pressure on lenders to be lenient, and it’s in their own interests, too. No bank wants to end up with a heap of repossessed properties in a falling market.
Seizing properties will prove controversial and costly, said Emma Prince, financial planner at Quilter. “Lenders do not want hundreds of thousands of customers to fall into arrears as this could leave them with a huge portfolio of bricks and mortar that they will struggle to sell.”
Property experts say the UK should avoid a wave of repossessions as lenders go easier on troubled borrowers.
On Friday, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt agreed with bankers that borrowers can alter their mortgage terms with damaging their credit score, while any repossessions without consent will be delayed for 12 months.
Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, said the payment shock will only affect a small percentage of homeowners in practice but added: “Any help to reduce stress is positive.”
Adam Oldfield, chief revenue officer at Phoebus Software, said mortgage lenders introduced stringent stress tests before the current crisis, to make sure applicants could still afford to service their mortgage if rates hit eight percent. “We still have a way to go before we hit that.”
Borrowers could ease the strain by switching to interest-only or longer-term mortgages, said Resolution Foundation chief executive Torsten Bell. “Lender practices have changed drastically since the very-high rates of repossessions seen during the 1990s.”
While homeowner and buy-to-let repossessions jumped by 50 percent in the first quarter, this was from a low base and mostly due to Covid delays, said Kate Davies, executive director of the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association.
“Just 750 properties were taken into possession in the first three months of this year, compared to a peak of 46,000 after the financial crisis in 2009.”
Most of these dated back to the Covid era, but were delayed by the governments moratorium on repossessions. Today’s issues wil take time to filter through the courts.
READ MORE: BoE ‘must stop hiking interest rates now’ or plunge UK into needless recession
Another advantage is that only 30 percent of homeowners have mortgages today, compared to 40 percent in 1989, when there were more young buyers.
Due to prohibitive house prices, a greater proportion of today’s owners are older people who bought a long time ago and have had years to pay down their debt.
They won’t be affected by the mortgage crunch. The smaller number of recent buyers in their 30s will suffer most. Sadly, many have young families.
Hunt won’t be bailing them out directly, and the cruel truth is that he shouldn’t either. Homeowners make big money when prices rise, entirely free of capital gains tax.
Taxpayers – many of whom will never own a home – shouldn’t step in if they lose money instead.
Worried borrowers should talk to their mortgage lender, rather than duck and cover. Options include payment holidays, extended mortgage terms and a temporary shift from a capital repayment to an interest-only mortgage.
Another positive is that employment is at a record lows, dipping to just 3.8 percent in April. If we can avoid a recession and people keep their jobs, most should still be able to muddle through somehow.
The other hope is that inflation falls in June and the Bank of England refrains from hiking rates again in August, as many experts would like it to do.
Afflicted homeowners will be crossing their fingers and hoping the mortgage crunch has been overhyped and inflation soon starts to ease. They face an anxious wait.
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