Fall in number of court applications to repossess homes

Legal action to repossess homes with mortgages in arrears dropped again last year, according to Courts Service figures. The number of orders granted by the courts was also down.

Banks issued 3,665 applications for orders of possession, down from just over 5,000 in 2015 and more than 8,100 in 2014. Most of the cases involved primary homes.

The highest number of applications, 752, was made in Dublin, followed by 310 in Cork and 251 in Kildare. The lowest numbers of applications were recorded in Longford, Leitrim and Carlow, with 42, 45 and 46 respectively.

The number of orders granted by the court was also down, from 1,284 in 2015 to 1,072 last year.

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Of the orders granted, almost 850 were for primary homes, while 60 were for buy-to-let properties and 164 were classified as other or unknown. Though there were 145 applications made in Limerick, there were no orders granted last year, the figures show. And Dublin had the highest number of granted orders at 184.

Three months

The drop in repossession actions last year coincided with a fall in the number of owner-occupier mortgages in arrears for three months or more. This figure fell by almost 4 per cent in the last three months of 2016. It was the 13th consecutive quarterly decline in these figures.

Yet although the number of accounts in arrears for more than 90 days fell, accounts in arrears for up to 90 days rose in the last three months of the year, the first increase since the end of September 2012.

More than 54,000 home loans remained at least 90 days behind in repayments at the end of last year.

And almost 121,000 loans on private dwelling houses were classified as restructured at the end of December, of which 87 per cent were meeting the terms of the new arrangement with lenders.