Consumers turn to lenders to restructure mortgages

The number of Irish mortgages that have been restructured permanently rose more than 2,700 since the end of the final quarter of 2013.

New data from the Department of Finance showed 53,969 mortgages have been switched to interest only, had their term extended or had some other modification to their payment schedule, due to engagement between lenders and customers, with the number of mortgage accounts in arrears of more than 90 days falling by more than 1,700 to 79,427 compared with figures compiled at the end of September. The number of mortgage accounts in arrears in general has risen by 710 since the end of 2013, but the department said this figure included any payments that were one day past their due date and could be attributed to new payment processing procedures as a result of the implementation of SEPA.

Temporary restructures, which include interest only repayments, a moratorium on payments and the deferred interest scheme, were also lower, while split mortgages were on the increase, rising to 7,131 by the end of January.

There are a total of 695,990 mortgages in Ireland at the moment, with 580,359 currently meeting repayment schedules.