Business Report‘s Roy Cokayne and Ethel Hazelhurt:

“The number of home owners who are at least one month in arrears on their mortgage repayments would have more than doubled to 55 000 between January and September, research based on data from the major banks has shown.

Rael Levitt, the chief executive of Alliance Group, which did the study, said yesterday that its own research and discussions with the credit control departments of all the major banks showed that about 25 000 home owners were in arrears in January. Auction Alliance has only been keeping these statistics since January.

Levitt said that about 8 000 of the 55 000 homes expected to have bonds in arrears in September would end up being sold.

He did not have any data on how many homes were being repossessed by the banks, but stressed that the home repossession process could take up to 12 months. Banks were trying to help debtors, which would slow down repossessions.”

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