'I’m not saying that there will be a financial crisis in two years, but more that it feels like there is a very unstable equilibrium at the moment'No mortgage relief any time soon, particularly for the one million-plus households remortgaging this year: that was the takeaway from the Bank of England’s decision to hold
In the first quarter of this year, 96,580 homeowners were in arrears of more than 2.5 per cent. That figure is up 3 per cent on the final quarter of 2023. The number of buy-to-let landlords whose rented homes are being repossessed has also soared. Six hundred buy-to-let mortgaged homes were repossessed in the first quarter of this year – 20 per cent higher than the final quarter of 2023.The “mortgages crisis” may have started with Truss, but it hasn’t gone away.
Despite this, house prices around the country remain at near-historic highs and are unaffordable for many buyers. Some estate agents, such as Savills, have even argued that Britain is about to experience a new housing price boom. That might sound strange – house prices have been falling and they were higher in 2020, 2021 and early 2022.