House Price Deflation Exposes The Real Scale of the UK Personal Debt Problem
House Price Deflation Exposes The Real Scale of the UK Personal Debt Problem
According to the Land Registry’s figures the annual rate of house price deflation in April 09 was approximately 16%, the biggest drop on record. This reduction in prices is generally accepted as being bad for the economy. If home owners see the value of their properties reduce, this means that their perceived wealth in the form of home equity reduces and on the whole they feel poorer. This in turn reduces their economic confidence and has a negative effect on the amount that they are prepared to spend on the high street.
In addition to this wider economic problem, house price deflation and the credit crunch is starting to expose the extent of personal debt problems in the UK. Over the past 10-15 years, as house prices have increased, so has the growth of home owner’s equity. With the comparative availability of mortgage credit, home owners have been able to realize this equity in a way not seen previously.
This situation has turned home equity into a realizable asset which could be accessed without actually having to sell the property.
I believe that this accessibility to home equity was a significant contributor to the growth of personal debt in the UK over the last 10 years. People have been confident to take out personal loans or use credit cards to purchase cars, household goods and holidays because they have felt that if required, they could fall back on the equity available in their properties. As a result, the number of remortgage deals sold to home owners with the purpose of releasing equity to consolidate unsecured debt massively increased.
In itself, one could argue that releasing equity to consolidate unsecured debt was not a significant problem.
After all, the incremental monthly mortgage payment was normally significantly lower than the monthly unsecured debt repayments thus saving money on a monthly basis. However, in my view, this process of consolidation significantly fueled consumer confidence and as a result drove up the amount of unsecured debt individuals were prepared to take on.
Unfortunately, the rapid reduction in house prices has meant that many homeowners have seen the equity in their property drastically reduce. Worse than this, figures released this week suggested that 10% of all home owners were now in negative equity. This situation coupled with the credit crunch has meant that the ability of home owners to release equity to consolidate debt has dramatically reduced.
This turnaround in homeowner fortunes has happened so quickly that individuals have been taken unawares and have not had the time or the inclination to reduce their unsecured borrowing appropriately. Of course, if unsecured borrowing is sustainable and monthly repayments are made on time, there is no issue. However, the pressures on the family finances have never been greater with a shrinking economy and increasing numbers of people taking reductions in their income and at worst losing their jobs all together. This situation will inevitably lead to increasing numbers of issues when it comes to repaying debt.
The problem that we face as individuals and an economy is that as and when the repayment of unsecured debt becomes unsustainable, homeowners will not be able to fall back on home equity to bail them out in the way that they have been used to in the recent past. As a result I believe that the number of people facing insolvency problems in the coming months will significantly increase. I expect this will be reflected in the Insolvency Services next set of insolvency figures due to be published in August 09 which I expect to show a significant increase in the number of personal bankruptcies and IVAs.
Worse still, as I highlighted in my May article “Is the Insolvency Problem being pushed underground”, I believe that even these figures will not properly reflect extent of the personal debt problem in the UK. The majority of insolvent cases are dealt with via informal Debt Management which is not officially recorded. As such, the problem will be far larger than even the governments own figures suggest. With large numbers of people likely to default on their personal unsecured borrowing in the coming months, the government should be justifiably concerned that a consumer lead economic recovery still seems a very long way off.
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April 23, 2012 






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