Servicing Debt: 14,000 properties (77 a day) were taken into possession in the first six months of 2007. This rose by nearly 18% compared with the previous half-year, and nearly 30% compared with the first half of 2006.
The number of mortgages in arrears of three months or more at the end of June 2007 rose to an estimated 125,100, up 4% compared with the end of December 2006.
There were 26,956 individual insolvencies (bankruptcy or IVA - Individual Voluntary Arrangement) in England and Wales in the second quarter of 2007 on a seasonally adjusted basis. This was a decrease of 8.1% on the previous quarter and an increase of 4.2% on the same period a year ago.
8.2m British adults are in serious debt and 2.1m are struggling with repayments according to the latest quarterly research commissioned by Thomas Charles and conducted by YouGov. They found that 18% adults in Britain have £10k or more of unsecured debt, equivalent to 8.2 million adults. This is a rise of 30% on last year.
Recent research from MoneyExpert.com reveals that 2.48 million (7%) people - are "very concerned" about their ability to manage debt while another 24% are “concerned”. 25% adults with debts have increased the amount they owe in the past three months as they struggle to juggle their borrowing burden
Over two million British consumers (6%) cannot quantify how much debt they’re in, according to research carried out by Unbiased.co.uk. This trend seems worse amongst young people, with 41% of 18-24 year olds unaware of their current debt burden to within £500.
Around a quarter of working Britons will be refused loans, mortgages and credit cards by 2011 as they struggle with mounting debts. Analyst Datamonitor said the number of borrowers blacklisted by mainstream lenders will increase from 7 million to 8.6 million over the next four years.
Borrowing costs hit a six-year high as the Bank of England pushed up interest rates in July 2007 by a quarter-point to 5.75% following a jump in inflation. This is the fifth rise in the last 12 months.
1.2m electricity customers and 0.8m gas customers are in debt and have debt payment arrangement scheduled to last longer than 13 weeks.
Almost half of working Brits were in the red at least once last year and over 2.1m are permanently overdrawn.
More than 7.4m household bill payments have been missed or paid late in the past six months. 1.23m regular bill payments ranging from gas and electricity to mobile phones and council tax have been missed each month.
More than 160,000 people contacted the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) in the first half of this year - an increase of 18.5% on the same period last year.
According to research by the Conservative Social Justice Policy Group between 7 and 9 million people in Britain claim to have had a serious debt problem and they estimate that British consumers are on average twice as indebted as those in Continental Europe.
Personal debt as a proportion of income has risen from 105% in 1997 to 164% in 2006 - the highest ever recorded and the highest in the developed world.
The number of county court judgments (CCJs) has risen to a near 10-year high. A total of 247,187 consumer debt related CCJs were issued in the first three months of the year - the highest quarterly total since the summer of 1997.
Consumers who decide to take out consolidation loans in order to tackle mounting debt are being advised to exercise caution, following reports that the majority of consolidation loan borrowers go on to accumulate further debt. Fool.co.uk has found that three out of five consumers who opt for consolidation loans generate more debt, while a quarter manage to clear their debts early due to consolidation.
More than 80%of Britons admit to regularly overspending (26% overspend to cheer themselves up when they are feeling low - they don't call it retail therapy for nothing!). 5% have considered or taken out an IVA or declared themselves bankrupt. 9% have taken out a credit card to pay off debt on another credit card. 10% have missed payments on credit cards, store cards, loan or mortgage repayments.
According to a recent report by the Legal Services Research Centre (LSRC) 89% of debt clients interviewed reported worrying about their money problems ‘most’ or ‘all’ of the time. Perhaps as a consequence, the great majority of clients believed their health had been adversely affected by their debt problems. 48% of clients described the impact of problems on their health as ‘great’, and 43% felt that their heath had suffered ‘to some extent’. Around three in five clients reported having received treatment, medication or counselling as a result. 45% of clients stated that debt problems had a negative effect on relationships with partners
Almost half of people in the UK are getting stressed at least once a week (47%) according to the Samaritans, with three quarters of people getting stressed at least once a month (74%). The biggest cause of stress for most people is money (51%), followed by job (38%), then family (27%).
Citizens Advice says they were approached for help with 15% more debt problems in January 2007 than in January 2006. They dealt with 1.4million debt problems in the past year – 11 % up on the previous 12 months and double the figure just eight years ago. This equates to 5,300 new debt problems a day.
Research by BBC Breakfast suggests that more than a quarter (27%) of us are anxious about how to pay the bills.
Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) clients have an average of £13,000 of debt which is nearly 17.5 times their monthly income. On average it would take CAB clients 77 years to pay back their debts in full.
Three quarters (74%) of British couples find money the hardest subject to talk about with their partners according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA). They also found that over a quarter (27%) of couples regularly argue when they try to discuss their finances; about a third (32%) of couples lie to their partners about how much they spend on their credit cards; over a third (35%) of British couples are kept awake at night worrying about their money situation
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