one in five will lose homes

Tuesday April 22, 07:29 AM
One in five will lose homes: report
Up to one in five households under mortgage stress will lose their homes, according to new figures.

The findings in the monthly Anatomy of Australian Mortgage Stress to be released on Thursday show that about 20 per cent of people who go "into the slippery slide" of borrowing never get out.

But "once you're in severe stress there's only about a 50-50 chance of getting out," Martin North from Fujitsu Consulting, the firm that compiled the report, told Fairfax on Tuesday.

The firm's previous monthly mortgage stress report indicated an alarming 750,000 Australian households would be under mortgage stress by mid-2008 - with about 300,000 under severe stress.

Fairfax reported that 72 per cent of households blamed interest rates hikes for the mortgage stress this year, up from 14 per cent in 2005.

Mortgage stress has hit young families the hardest with 35 per cent experiencing the pressure.