Here is a UK article with some horrifying stats.......
Politicians and regulators all need to be punished
AFTER the stolen loot is handed back......
100 families a day lose their homes as repossession soar 50% to 12 year high
8 August 2008
Britain is in the grip of an escalating repossession crisis with the numbers evicted from their home soaring nearly 50 per cent over the last year.
Between January and June, 18,900 families – equal to more than 100 families every day – lost their homes after failing to pay their mortgage.
The number who will be repossessed is set to keep on rising as the lethal combination of poor pay-rises and soaring household bills takes its toll.
In a sign of the impending crisis, a shocking 155,600 people have not pad a penny of their mortgage for more than three months.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders predicts 45,000 people will have had their homes repossessed by the end of the year.
Unless they find money quickly, they will also face the ghastly experience of losing their home, a disruption to family life similar to divorce.
The figures, published today by the Council of Mortgage Lenders, graphically illustrate the human toll of Britain’s economic problems.
With gas bills soaring up to 35 per cent and massive hikes in food and fuel prices, it has never been so difficult to find the money to pay the mortgage.
To make matters worse, anybody whose mortgage deal has run out and needs to find a new deal will be hit with a sharp price in the monthly cost.
Adam Sampson, chief executive of the charity Shelter, said the figures are ‘shocking’ but official forecasts predict they will get even worse.
By the end of the year, the CML expects a total of 45,000 people will have been repossessed, the highest number for 13 years.
He said ‘with current fears that unemployment is set to grow, there is no doubt we are inching ever closer to the dark days of the repossession crisis’.
We know that behind these figures are thousands of families facing sleepless nights worrying about how to make their next mortgage payment, and many thousands more will be waking up to the frightening reality of repossession.
The worry for many families who are struggling is the options that used to be open to them to find more money have been closed by the credit crunch.
In the past they could take out an unsecured personal loan, re-mortgage or borrow more money on their credit cards to pay their mortgage.
But banks are so cautious about lending that many people are now being refused.
Michael Coogan, CML’s director general, said ‘It is inevitable that more borrowers coping strategies will come under pressure in current conditions than in the unusually benign years of the last decade.’