Statistics tell the story

Of late, the mortgage market has been a very positive place with product choice rapidly on the increase. Lenders have been appearing keen to lend and some even wanting to help over and above the normal call of duty! But (and you knew it was coming!), the statistics are still showing the fragile state of our economy.
August’s creditaction figures state that:
- 331 people every day of the year will be declared insolvent or bankrupt. This is equivalent to 1 person every 60 seconds during a working day.
- 1,577 Consumer County Court Judgements (CCJs) were issued every day during Q1 2011 and the average judgement amount was £3,118.
- 220 mortgage possession claims will be issued and 160 mortgage possession orders will be made today (100 properties were repossessed every day during Q1 2011)
- 1,578 people reportedly were made redundant every day during the 3 months to end May 2011
- The UK population is projected to grow by 1,205 people a day over the next decade

However, despite all of these eye opening and, frankly, quite depressing figures, the one that really is quite unbelievable in the current climate is that, in Q1 2011, UK banks and building societies wrote off £1.89bn (£866m of that being credit card debt). This amounts to a write-off of £20.71m a day! Who said lenders have funding issues??
The average house price in the UK in May 2011 for first time buyers stood at £150,685 which is an annual decrease of 2.1%. The typical first-time buyer deposit in May was 20% (£29,874). The average first-time buyer borrowed 3.14 times their income and the average first-time buyer loan was £119,497.
As at the end of March, there were 1.3m buy-to-let mortgages outstanding, worth a total of £152 bn. By value, buy-to-let mortgages accounted for 12.3% of all mortgages.
And finally, as the summer is well underway - Barclays estimate that, over the course of the six week summer holiday period, British holidaymakers will spend a total of £1.47 billion whilst they are abroad (via debit cards and cash withdrawals). However, Barclays say that this figure is broadly the same as that for summer 2010, and suggest that this shows that consumer confidence has not totally bounced back since the end of the recession.
Next week will be more positive, honest! Sometimes, we just need a reality check!