Banks repossessing more than four family homes every day

More than four family homes are being repossessed every day, stark figures from the Central Bank have revealed.

Figures covering three months to the end of September showed 421 struggling homeowners either volunteered or were forced to hand over the keys to the properties.

On top of that, another 288 houses or apartments owned by landlords were taken by banks and finance houses.

The latest report on the mortgage arrears crisis from the Central Bank showed the level of repossessions is about the same as it was at the start of the year with more than four homes on average being taken from borrowers every day.

The Central Bank said 34,551 mortgages on family homes were behind with repayments by two years or more but this number has been dropping consistently since the middle of last year.

There is almost €2.2bn of arrears on these loans, the report stated.

Another 14,518 properties which are in the buy-to-let sector are also more than two years behind in repayments with more than €1.5bn of unpaid arrears.

Data from the past six years showed the banks have repossessed more than 7,500 homes and apartments from the year before they were bailed out in 2010 until the end of September this year.

The Central Bank also revealed that "non-bank entities" now control 45,638 mortgages in Ireland and almost 15,000 of those are held by unregulated loan owners such as foreign vulture funds.