- Around four million people are on council housing waiting lists. The Local Government Association has predicted that this could go over five million by 2010.
- The Pre Budget Report pledged an additional £775 million towards social housing. However, the share towards building new properties – £150 million – will only result in around 2,000 homes.
- Mortgage lenders can sell a property, without being granted a repossession order, after the owner has missed two mortgage payments.
- Since being nationalised, Northern Rock has repossessed faster than any other mortgage lender.
- The number of borrowers in arrears reached 168,000 in October. There were 29,516 court repossession orders from July to September, an increase of 3% from the previous quarter.
- Banks are no longer offering lower, competitive interest rates to mortgage holders unless they have a high amount of equity in their homes, ie they have already paid for most of the property.
- Over 500,000 homeowners are now in negative equity, meaning that their debt is higher than the market value of their home.
