THE ANTICIPATED “avalanche” of home repossessions has not started yet, the master of the High Court Edmund Honohan has warned, as the number of orders granted by the High Court continued yesterday at record level for 2009.
He said the number of repossession cases was increasing weekly and, because a moratorium was currently in place, the worst was yet to come.
Mr Honohan said the majority of cases related to mortgages which had been taken out in 2007 and as a result, there would be an “avalanche” of new cases “come next October”.
The warning follows new figures released by the Courts Service which show 207 repossession cases were taken in the High Court in the first three months of 2009.
This compares to 95 cases for the same period in 2008.
Mr Honohan told The Irish Times yesterday that he was hearing more than 100 repossession cases each week, nearly treble the amount he was hearing when he first warned of an avalanche of such cases.
In February of this year, he warned of a dramatic rise in repossession court cases, saying few cases so far were related to job loss.
He warned that the cases would continue to rise unless “they go to the Circuit Court or houses start to sell”.
Mr Honohan said more cases should be remitted to the Circuit Court but that cases were ending up in the High Court due to jurisdiction issues.
With new houses, there is no valuation certificate and as such, jurisdiction would have to be established in the Circuit Court for a case to be brought there.
“The Minister for Justice could give more jurisdiction to the Circuit Court,” he said.
He believed “the stigma of losing your house is much less now than it was”.
“Upheaval is the main problem so people should start making an exit strategy by looking for local authority housing.”
Mr Honohan, who as master deals with procedural court applications, also warned against the voluntary surrender of homes, saying local authorities were less likely to give housing to people who gave the keys back to the lender; “they treat that as being self-inflicted homelessness”.
However, he did provide some positive news for homeowners facing repossession: “Nobody ever ends up on the side of the road.”