At the end of last year, 3.6% of the 793,000 private residential mortgage accounts in Ireland had been in arrears for more than 90 days, and mortgage lenders held over 400 repossessed homes.
According to data published today by the Financial Regulator, mortgage lenders held a stock of 331 repossessed residential properties at the beginning of September last year.
Over the following three months 27 more were repossessed by Court Order, 74 were either voluntarily surrendered or abandoned and 35 were disposed of.
The total number of homes that the financial institutions had on their books grew by 20% in the three months from October to December.
At the end of December 2009, the 793,000 private Irish residential mortgage accounts were worth €118.3bn.
Overall mortgage debt for private residential mortgages fell by €306m in the last three months of 2009. The average owed by each household is about €149,500.
Between September and December, mortgage lenders applied to court to begin proceedings in 233 cases in which arrears totalling €10.2m had been built up.
In detail, 28,603 mortgages were in arrears for more than 90 days at the end of December. 19,185 of these had been in arrears for more than 180 days.
