Resolving mortgage distress after COVID-19: some lessons from the last crisis

Fergal McCann () and O’Malley, Terry

No 121, ESRB Working Paper Series from European Systemic Risk Board

Abstract: Abstract We analyse micro data on Irish mortgages and distressed households’ balance sheets in the last decade to assess the debt resolution process in the Irish mortgage market in the lead up to the COVID-19 shock. We highlight the widespread engagement of Irish borrowers with debt resolution mechanisms during a decade in which one sixth of mortgage accounts were restructured by 2016. Lenders favoured short-term mortgage modifications at the beginning of the decade and three-quarters of performing mortgages with short-term modifications in 2011-2012 remained performing at end-2017. However, close to half of these cases involved a subsequent longer-term restructure, consistent with concerns that short-term modification alone is not sufficient to ensure mortgage sustainability. In other cases, an over-reliance on unsustainable short-term arrangements translated into longer-term arrears accumulation. Turning to the financial distress of households seeking a resolution to their arrears, we find an average income fall of roughly one third since mortgage origination and that one third had already reduced their non-housing expenditures to below the recommended minimum level used in the personal insolvency system. Finally, we show that larger cuts in repayment burdens and lower ex-post payment-to-income ratios are both highly predictive of successful long-term restructures. JEL Classification: F21, F28, G51

Keywords: COVID-19 crisis; loan moratoria; mortgage default; mortgage modification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.esrb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/wp/esrb.wp121~5615b74291.en.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Resolving mortgage distress after COVID-19: some lessons from the last crisis (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:srk:srkwps:2021121

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ESRB Working Paper Series from European Systemic Risk Board 60640 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Official Publications ().