Fall in number of families on the brink of losing their homes across Merseyside and Cheshire

May 18 2009 Liverpool Daily Post

For Sale Signs

THE pain of recession has eased a little with a surprise fall in the number of families on the brink of losing their homes across Merseyside and Cheshire.

County courts reported 967 repossession orders against householders unable to pay their mortgage bills in the first three months of this year – but that was a 38% fall on a year earlier.

The decline in seizure orders was even sharper in some areas – including in Southport (46%), St Helens (42%), Chester (42%) and in Liverpool (40%).

The Council of Mortgage Lenders said it was likely to drop its prediction that house repossessions in 2009 would match the dreadful tally during the last recession of the early 1990s.

The CML had suggested that 75,000 homes would be seized this year – a figure it now described as “pessimistic” and will revise in the summer.

Even so, the group still reported that the number of homes actually repossessed rose to 12,800 in the first three months of the year, up 50% on the same period of 2008.

Margaret Beckett, the housing minister, said the government’s instruction to lenders to “give borrowers more breathing space” was having an impact.