Resolving the Mortgage Crisis

The mortgage arrears crisis rumbles on.  It is a failure on many sides that the problem persists.  There needs to an increased focus on the issue of sustainability, and in particular what should happen if a mortgage is unsustainable. 

One approach to sustainable is that the mortgage balance is decreasing, or at least non-increasing, with a high likelihood of being repaid over a 15 to 25 year period (depending on the age or circumstances of the borrower).

The course of action that should be taken is relatively straightforward and needs to

1. Every effort should be made to make a mortgage sustainable.  This can involve interest-only periods if the problem is temporary or more permanent, and costly approaches, such as:
• split mortgages with a portion of the loan warehoused at low or no interest, or
• interest rate reductions with the banks temporarily reducing rates to one per cent, or lower if necessary, in order for the repayment of the borrower to reduce the balance.
2. If the mortgage cannot be made sustainable the mortgage should be ended, the property repossessed, and a residual, if any remains, should be cancelled in a short period (two to three years).

It really does not need to be more complicated than that. Interest rate reductions have been favoured here since November 2010 (and also April and June 2011)

Of course, around half of mortgages are outside of the state-owned banks and we cannot compel them to offer generous interest rate reductions to their customers.  It is likely that a publicly-funded scheme will be necessary to pay the interest to the banks.  The State can negotiate with the banks  on the total interest paid but the objective should be to reduce the interest rate faced by the borrower to one per cent or less.  Some of the previous posts went through some mechanics of achieving this.

This is far better than a “mortgage-to-rent” type scheme and has the added advantage of being temporary rather than permanent.  In time the borrower’s repayment capacity may improve and they will be able to pay more of the capital and, in turn, more of the interest (but on a reduced capital amount).

Will some undeserving non-payers benefit from reduced interest rates? Yes. But the priority has to be help those who could meet their mortgage with some assistance and to provide a way out for those who can’t reduce their mortgage even if it made almost interest free.

As stated in these cases the mortgage should be ended, the property repossessed and any residual debt, if any, should be written off in a short period.  Will some undeserving non-payers benefit from the cancellation of the residual debt? Possibly.  While the cancellations should be widespread some consideration should be given to the borrower’s ability to pay as a poorly-designed system that allows people to walk away from their obligations without consequences will lead to other problems.

Writing off debt that can never be repaid is what should happen.  We don’t need a public scheme for this. If banks have lent money to people who can’t repay it they have to absorb the losses.  But we do need to accept that repossessions are part of the solution of the mortgage crisis.

So lets get interest rates down for those that are in some difficulty and allow those who are in over their heads to make a fresh start.

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Government Bonds held by the State-Owned Banks

A lot of attention has been given to the Irish government bonds held by the Central Bank of Ireland and the benefits that arise from the recycling of interest payments back to the Exchequer.  In a vein similar to this are the substantial holdings of Irish government bonds by the ‘covered’ or Irish-headquartered banks.  A breakdown of the overall interest bill is here.

Originally the covered banks were AIB, Anglo, BOI, EBS, INBS and PTSB but now only AIB, BOI and PTSB remain.  This chart shows their combined holdings of Irish government bonds since 2008.

It can be seen that around nil in the run-up to the crash in 2008 but increased substantially during the crisis and now the banks have a holding with a market value of around €19.4 billion. 

This is significant because both AIB and PTSB are almost fully state-owned so the interest paid on these bonds does not leave the broader government sector.  There are similar benefits with BOI but to a lesser extent as that is now 14 per cent state-owned.

The recent interim financial reports for 2014 from the banks allow us to see the breakdown of this €19.4 billion across the three banks.  Some extracts from the reports are reproduced below the fold but the relevant figures for end-2014 are:

• AIB: €9,107 million
• PTSB: €3,857 million
• BOI: €6,409 million
• Total: €19,373 million

These are market value figures.  The face value is probably around 15%-20% less given than the current yields are much less than the interest coupons.  Still it is likely that between them AIB and PTSB hold around €10 billion of government bonds.  If the average interest coupon is 4 per cent then €400 million of the annual interest bill is going to state-owned banks.  It doesn’t have the full circular nature back to the Exchequer as with the interest flows to the Central Bank but it not a net loss to the State either.

It could also be considered that the money the government used to bailout the banks was borrowed from the banks themselves.  And hopefully we will be able to pay this money back by selling the equity stakes we have built up in the banks so the interest expenditure never leaves the government sector.

It is also worth noting that the banks will have made significant profits on these bonds.  Their holdings grew rapidly from mid-2011 and roughly doubled (from €9 billion to €18 billion) over the next 12 months.  Two things are notable about this period when the banks purchased these bonds on the secondary market.

1. The summer of 2011 was when AIB and PTSB received most of their recapitalisation funds from the state (following the March 2011 PCAR exercise).
2. It was the period when the yields on Irish government bonds were at their highest.

The banks used the recapitalisation funds, in part, to buy Irish government bonds and have made large profits on them.  The table from AIB’s annual report shows an “unrealised gross gain” of €1.3 billion from it’s holding of Irish government bonds. 

We can imagine this being roughly double, around €2.5 billion, across the holdings of the three banks. Not only are we not paying interest to third-party investors on the money used to bail out the banks, the banks actually made a profit by using the money to buy Irish government bonds on the cheap from such investors.

Here are the extracted tables. First AIB (pdf page 265):

And PTSB (pdf page 22):

And finally BOI (pdf page 154):

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Where is the best place to be at-risk-of-poverty?

The at-risk-of-poverty measure defined as 60 per cent of the median income gets a significant amount of attention.  It is a far from perfect measure but useful for what it does – provide relative information on the lower end of the income distribution.

The at-risk-of-poverty measure is limited to disposable income.  However Eurostat provide other measures of the circumstances of people who are in this group.  We will consider ten of these measures across deprivation, durables, economic strain, housing, and environment and combine with two measures of the bottom income quintile on consumption expenditure and unmet health needs to come up with a crude aggregate measure. 

• Inability to keep home adequately warm
• Inability to afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish (or vegetarian equivalent) every second day
• Enforced lack of a computer
• Enforced lack of a personal car
• Household overcrowding rate – excluding single-person households
• Housing cost overburden rate
• Share of population having neither a bath, nor a shower, nor indoor flushing toilet in their household
• Share of population living in a dwelling with a leaking roof, damp walls, floors or foundation, or rot in window frames of floor
• Pollution, grime or other environmental problems
• Crime, violence or vandalism in the area

The following two measures are not provided for the group who are at-risk-of-poverty but for the first quintile (bottom 20 per cent) of equivalised disposable income.  There is obviously significant overlap between the two groups.

• Self-reported unmet needs for medical examination (reason: too expensive)
• Mean consumption expenditure per adult equivalent (in purchasing power standard)

We will take them in pairs.  First ability to keep home adequately warm and ability to afford a meal with meat every second day.  The percentages measure the proportion of people at-risk-of-poverty in each country who experience each measure.

Next we have the enforced lack of a computer and the enforced lack of a personal car.

Next are the household overcrowding rate (definition) and the housing cost overburden rate (definition).

Next we have the proportion living of those at-risk-of-poverty in a dwelling without a bath, shower or flushing toilet and the proportion living in a leaky or damp dwelling.

Finally for the at-risk-of-poverty group we have those living in areas that suffer from grime and those that suffer from crime.

The  final two measures are for the first quintile of equivalised disposable income.  These are self-reported unmet medical examination needs by reason of being too expensive and mean consumption expenditure per equivalised adult.

Data on consumption expenditure is not available by quintile for Luxembourg and Italy.  For the entire population Luxembourg comes first and Italy tenth.  These rankings are used below.

The last thing we’ll do is construct a crude aggregate measure using the above 12 components.  We will assign a score of 1 to the country that fares best under each measure, 2 for the next best, all the way down to 15 for the bottom-ranking country.  The 12 measures across deprivation, housing, economic strain, environment and consumption are equally weighted. Only the ordinal ranking from each measure is used so the composite measure is by no means perfect but it is not without its merits.  The best score is 12 and the worst is 180.

Anyway here is the picture:

So there it is.  The best country in the EU15 in which to be at-risk-of-poverty is Sweden.

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Exaggerating the Irish-US economic relationship

Here is a link to a report published today on the Irish-US economic relationship with a particular emphasis on FDI.  The report has attracted some attention.

• The Irish Times: “Ireland is the number one destination in the world for US foreign direct investment (FDI), according to a new report.”
• Irish Examiner: “Ireland is now the number one destination in the world for US Foreign Direct Investment.”
• Irish Independent: “Ireland is the number one destination for US foreign direct investment”

We’ll start with a couple of charts from the report.  First the total US FDI stock in Ireland.

There are a couple of things that should cause doubt about the above chart.  The first is that the data appear to be nominal so is not comparing like with like.  The second is the extra-ordinary increases that have occurred in recent years (when inflation was low).  The FDI stock rose from $130 billion in 2009 to $240 billion in 2013.  Just what did US companies invest in in Ireland over those five years?

The most notable concern is the source of the data: the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.  The problems with this data are a well-worn path.  In their FDI data the BEA assign companies to countries on the basis of their place of registration or incorporation.  The activity can happen anywhere but is assigned to the country where the company is incorporated.  There is no restriction on the activity taking place within the assigned jurisdiction.

The above chart refers to the investment stock of Irish-incorporated subsidiaries of US MNCs.  It does not refer to the investment stock in Ireland of US MNCs. 

There are also issues when it comes to the definition of FDI.  One would assume it involves flows inwards but buried in the glossary at the end is this:

There are three components of foreign direct investment: equity capital flows, intercompany debt, and reinvested earnings.

The last part of this is crucial.  The definition of FDI includes retained earnings that are not repatriated to the US parent.  Therefore there are two reasons why the FDI flows to Ireland are unusually large in this data:

1. It includes all the activities of Irish-incorporated subsidiaries of US MNCs, not just their activities in Ireland
2. It includes the retained earnings of these companies, some of which are part of the most profitable companies in the world.

The tax strategies of some of the most high profile US MNCs in Ireland have attracted a lot of attention in recent years.  Schemes such as the “double-irish” and “stateless income” have achieved notoriety.  The whole purpose of these schemes is to trigger the deferral provisions in Subpart F of the US tax code for profits earned outside the US.  This deferral is maintained as long as the profits are not repatriated to the US parent, i.e. as long as they are retained in the non-US-incorporated affiliate.

We know that many US companies use Irish-incorporated companies as part of their global tax structures.  These companies have been accumulating massive retained earnings and these retained earnings are counted as FDI flows to Ireland – even though the money may never even pass through Ireland.

Apple is a case in point.  We know that Apple has Irish-incorporated companies at the centre of its global tax structure.  We don’t need to rehash it here.  Three of the key companies,  ASI, AOE and AOI, were subject to a US Senate investigation where the committee chair, Sen. Carl Levin concluded:

In short, these companies’ decision makers, board meetings, assets, asset managers, and key accounting records are all in the United States.

These companies are Irish-incorporated so are included in the BEA FDI data but almost everything about them happens in the US.  Ireland gains nothing from the accumulation of profits in these entities.  And later this year the European Commission will conclude that their worldwide profits are not subject to Irish Corporation Tax.  We should not count their retained earnings as FDI inflows to Ireland.

Apple’s most recent SEC 10K filing shows that Apple has huge sums of retained earnings in these companies with the US corporate income tax deferred until the funds are transferred to a US-incorporated entity within Apple’s structure. 

Apple has around $130 billion of profits retained offshore.  Of this they have made a tax provision to reflect the possibility that they may repatriate around half of it:

As of September 27, 2014, the Company had [.] deferred tax liabilities of $20.3 billion.

Apple reports a similar deferred tax liability for funds that it has not declared a intention to repatriate.  Apple may decide to repatriate these profits to the US but on their balance sheet have not set aside the funds to cover the payment of the (indefinitely) deferred taxation.

As of September 27, 2014, U.S. income taxes have not been provided on a cumulative total of $69.7 billion of such [foreign] earnings. The amount of unrecognized deferred tax liability related to these temporary differences is estimated to be approximately $23.3 billion.

We know that Apple is accumulating most of these funds in Irish-incorporated companies.  These funds are counted as an FDI inflow to Ireland in the BEA data. 

The massive profits that Apple has been earning recently (and it is just after reporting net earnings of $18 billion for Q4 2014) are a major driver of the increase of the “Irish” stock of FDI of US MNCs in recent years.

The report does account for some of this by stripping out the effect of holding companies (companies that own other companies) but this still gives an inaccurate picture. ASI is a trading company in Apple’s structure but does most of its trading in Cupertino, California; not Hollyhill, Cork.  The stock of FDI excluding holding companies will equally be skewed by the extent to which US MNCs retain earnings in their trading companies.

We can try to look at data from the CSO which use the source of the investment rather than the jurisdiction of incorporation in their approach.  But that is equally problematic.  At the end of 2013 the CSO but the end-year position of US FDI in Ireland at €18.3 billion.  For investment from Luxembourg is was €66.9 billion.  The CSO data does not break through to the beneficial owner of the investment; it merely gets to the next location in the chain.  FDI from “offshore centres” of Central America (aka Caribbean tax havens) was €20.7 billion.

Trying to establish economic relationships on the basis of official FDI data is close to impossible given the hugely complex operating structure of MNCs.  Collating the data on the basis of place of incorporation (as in the BEA data) does not reflect activities that happen outside of the country of incorporation.  While collating the data on the basis of place of origination (as in the CSO data) does not pierce through to the beneficial owner of the investment.

The claim that Ireland is the top destination of US FDI is bogus.

This chart reflects little more than the fact that some of the most profitable US MNCs accumulate their non-US earnings in Irish-incorporated companies.  The impact of Apple has already been noted.  Google Ireland Holdings will be in the above chart but that’s little more than a brass-plate operation in Hamilton Bermuda, though crucially is Irish-incorporated.  The above chart reflects tax optimisation strategies to retain earnings outside the US rather than any substantive investment activity in Ireland.

There are other issues that should raise doubts in the report.  Here is a chart of the sales of “Irish” affiliates in the BEA data.

For 2013, sales of around $340 billion are shown.  For 2013, the dollar/euro rate averaged 0.783.  This means the sales shown above correspond to something around €266 billion.  According to the CSO total exports from Ireland were €184 billion in 2013 (national accounting methodology).  Therefore US companies account for 145 per cent of Irish exports. Or something.

The something is that most of these sales are not made in Ireland.

Next, the report estimates that the gross value added of US MNC affiliates in Ireland was $85.5 billion in 2013.  Using the above exchange rate gives a figure of €67.0 billion.

The CSO tell us that gross value added for the entire Irish economy in 2013 was €159 billion (add in net product taxes of €16 billion to get GDP of €175 billion).  Anyway today’s report purports to tell us that 42 per cent of the added value in the Irish economy was generated by US companies.  Maybe Bono was right but this report isn’t.

There is one chart in the report that hints that all is not as it seems with the headline FDI, sales and value added data.  And this one really is the bottom line for us in Ireland: jobs.

Since 2009 the stock of US FDI is reported to have gone from $125 billion to $240 billion.  Unfortunately the trend for manufacturing employment has been somewhat different.

There are lots of claims in the report that do not stack up to scrutiny.  Many of these are usefully collected under ‘Chapter 1 highlights’.  They include:

• Total U.S. investment to Europe in the first nine months of 2014 fell 19% from the same period in 2013, to $115 billion, while U.S. flows to Ireland surged nearly 42%, to roughly $37 billion.
• U.S. direct investment stock in Ireland totalled a record $240 billion in 2013, a greater investment stake than Germany and France combined ($196 billion).
• U.S. companies have invested roughly $277 billion in Ireland since 1990; the comparable figure for Brazil: $92 billion; for Russia: $10 billion; for India: $32 billion; and China: $51 billion.
• US affiliate output in Ireland totalled nearly $82 billion in 2012, a five-fold increase from the start of the century. For the year, US affiliates produced more output in Ireland than in China ($46.4 billion) and India ($21 billion) combined.

In the report the section that looks at FDI excluding holding companies includes the following claims:

• In 2013, the last year of complete data, Ireland ranked as the number one destination in the world for U.S. foreign direct investment. U.S. FDI to the nation totalled nearly $19 billion, a record high. The figure was just over 12.2% of the global total.
• Ireland accounted for 36.4% of total US FDI to the European Union in 2013, a record high.
• In the post-crisis era (the 2008-13 period), U.S. firms have invested more capital in Ireland ($81.1 billion) than the BRICs combined ($52 billion). Corporate America’s investment in Ireland since 2008 is five times larger than comparable investment levels in China and 16 times greater than U.S. FDI in India

None of the above seven claims are true if one is interested in the economic impact of US MNCs in Ireland.  This is not to discount the impact of US MNCs in Ireland.  The ‘Chapter 1 highlights’ concludes with he following:

• For decades, US firms in Ireland have been instrumental in creating jobs and income for Irish workers, profits for indigenous firms, and tax revenues for local and national governments. Due in part to the large presence of US affiliates, Ireland has been transformed from one of the more underdeveloped nations of Europe into one of the most prosperous over the past 50 years.

Ignoring the slight hyperbole there is truth here.  Unfortunately the report offers very little to actually verify it.  Can we do it here?  Well we actually have done it before.  See here and also elsewhere here.  Eurostat have added an 2012 update to the data previously used and here is the updated table.

The “business economy” is NACE Rev. 2 categories B to N excluding K (financial and insurance activities).  The contribution of US-owned companies to the Irish economy is immense.  The direct effects for 2012 are:

• Compensation of Employees: €6.2 billion
• Capital Expenditure: €5.3 billion (average €3 billion)
• Corporation Tax:  €2 billion (estimate)

Some of the capital expenditure will go on imported plant, machinery and equipment but a large part of will be spent on Irish-sourced materials and, of course, labour. 

The Gross Value Added of US-owned companies in 2012 was €35.9 billion.  This is a much more reasonable, but still hugely significant, 22.8 per cent of total GVA for the entire Irish economy.  Of this, €6.2 billion went on the compensation of employees giving a labour share of value added of just 17 per cent for US-owned companies.

Gross Operating Surplus was €29.7 billon in 2012.  This is akin to EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation).  We would need to subtract interest and depreciation (capital allowances) to get taxable income.  This would probably come in at around €20 billion and with an effective corporation tax rate of around 11 per cent this would result in Corporation Tax revenues of around €2 billion, give or take.

There will also be indirect effects.  US companies in Ireland bought €90 billion of goods and services in 2012 for intermediate consumption.  Most of this will be imported (raw materials for pharmaceuticals, patent royalties and the like) but they also will buy a lot of goods and services in Ireland.  It is estimated that for every three direct jobs from US MNCs a further two indirect jobs are created from their expenditure in Ireland.

This will include expenditure on security, logistics, catering, cleaning and other services, as well as thousands of agency workers used by the companies.  There are also other largely unseen things like the outsourcing of manufacturing,  quality control and research activities, and, of course, expenditure on professional services from legal, accountancy and tax firms in Ireland. 

It is difficult to pinpoint the contribution these expenditures from US companies make to the Irish economy but it is a significant amount.  It is a finger in the wind but I would estimate the figure is in the ball park of €4-5 billion. 

The now-discontinued Annual Business Survey of Economic Impact from the now-defunct Forfás indicated that agency-supported foreign-owned firms bought €3.3 billion of Irish-sourced materials in 2012 (14 per cent of total materials purchased) and, excluding computer programming, €4.1 billion of Irish-sourced services (8 per cent of total services purchased).

As stated above the bottom line for Ireland is jobs.  The Eurostat data show that this was around 100,000 in 2012.  And this is for “the business economy” which excludes financial and insurance services (the IFSC and related sectors).  This would add to the employment total from US MNCs and bring the annual compensation of employee payments to close to €8 billion and add maybe another couple of hundred million to Corporation Tax receipts.  Around half of the Corporation Tax paid in Ireland comes from US-owned companies.

All told the contribution of US-owned companies to the Irish economy is probably between €17 billion and €20 billion a year, every year.  Under conservative estimates it can be put as:

• Compensation of Employees: €8 billion
• Capital Expenditure: €3 billion
• Corporation Tax: €2 billion
• Expenditure on Goods and Services: €4 billion

As well as direct Corporation Tax from their profits, the government will also collect Income Tax and PRSI from their compensation of employees and a range of taxes from the indirect expenditure by the US-owned companies.  Government revenue probably benefits to the tune of €6 billion a year, every year, from the presence of US MNCs in Ireland.

The impact US MNCs make in Ireland is immense.  We have a class of high-performing rent-seekers who seek gain from the investments by US shareholders instead of looking for preferential treatment to gain from allocations by government.  We are all the better for it.  It is high risk but we are gaining from it (as are US shareholders).

There is no need for headline-grabbing efforts to exaggerate the impact US MNCs have on Ireland.  FDI data, and BEA data in particular, tell us little about what is happening in Ireland.  If they don’t tell us anything about effective tax rates in Ireland (and they don’t!) it’s a bit disingenuous to use them to say something about foreign investment in Ireland.  Maybe Finance will drop Foreign Affairs a note discouraging them from writing forwards (see page 7) to such reports.

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Repossessions of PDHs

We now have five years of data on repossessions of primary dwelling houses (PDHs) from the mortgage arrears statistics published by the Financial Regulator.  The figures here are taken from the quarterly releases. 

In the five years from 2010 to 2014 there were  1,056 court-ordered repossessions and 2,598 PDHs that were voluntarily surrendered.

There has been a slow increase in the rate of court-ordered repossessions.  The annual totals for the past five years are:

• 2010: 102
• 2011: 196
• 2012: 194
• 2013: 251
• 2014: 313

The trend line for court ordered repossessions shows a rise of about 2 per quarter.

There has been a notable increase in the number of PDHs that were voluntary surrendered.

The annual total for the above series are:

• 2010: 261
• 2011: 412
• 2012: 412
• 2013: 515
• 2014: 998

Of PDHs that are repossessed 70 per cent are voluntarily surrendered and 30 per cent are on foot of a court order.  There remains a lack of data on the number of forced sales where the bank does not take formal possession of the property but forces the sale in order to use the proceeds to offset the mortgage.

The second set of figures in the table below relate to the number of court proceedings for repossession issued by lenders.  These jumped up considerable in Q3 2013 when the lacuna in the law known as the ‘Dunne Judgement’ was resolved.

Court proceedings issued “means that a formal application has been made to a Court to begin repossession proceedings during the quarter. Includes:

• cases where an application has been made to Court but a Court date has not yet been received;
• cases where Court proceedings have issued but have not been served.”

Court proceedings concluded “includes cases where an Order for Possession/Sale has been obtained or Court proceedings have concluded because:

• proceedings have been struck out;
• settlement agreement has been entered on the record;
• proceedings have been adjourned generally (i.e., proceedings may have been settled, but the settlement remains a matter of agreement between the parties, and does not form part of the Court record; the lender will be able to recommence proceedings if the borrower does not comply with the agreement);
• proceedings have been dismissed;
• judgement has been entered in favour of the lender, including an Order for Possession/Sale.

It excludes:

• cases where the value of the property has been realised but an amount remains outstanding on which the lender is seeking repayment.
• cases under appeal.”

It can be seen that around 47 per cent of concluded court proceedings result in the granting of a court order for repossessions.  The other cases are concluded by other means which include the lender and the borrower reaching an agreement on a revised repayment schedule.

The number of court proceedings issued has soared in 2014.  The annual figures since 2010 are:

• 2010: 838
• 2011: 568
• 2012: 1,327
• 2013: 3,846
• 2014: 11,425

As stated this is partly related to the Dunne Judgement but also to the Mortgage Arrears Resolution Targets (MART) set for the lenders which count court proceedings as a “sustainable solution” for long-term arrears cases.  In the case of some non-cooperative borrowers this may be only option available to lenders.  There are still many borrowers in arrears who have not completed a financial statement for their lender.  It is likely that issuing court proceedings will see some non-cooperative borrowers begin to co-operate.

The number of repossession orders granted has increased but not yet to the same extent proceedings issued as cases work their way through the system.  The annual figures for the granting of  court orders are:

• 2010: 418
• 2011: 445
• 2012: 398
• 2013: 626
• 2014: 968

Some repossession orders are not followed through on if the parties can reach agreement after the order is granted while some are the formal conclusion to what would otherwise be a voluntary surrender except that the borrower has ceased to participate in the process.

There have been 2,855 court orders for repossession issued over the past five years and 1,114 court-ordered repossessions have been followed through on, giving a rate of 40 per cent.

Over the past five years 47 per cent of court proceedings concluded result in a court order for repossessions and 40 per cent of those (19 per cent of all proceedings concluded) results in a court-ordered repossession.

Given the scale of the mortgage crisis the number of forced repossessions remains remarkably low.  It won’t around 1,000 for long and with the increase in court proceedings issued and the likely subsequent increase in court orders granted we will see whether this will translate into an increase in actual forced repossessions.

UPDATE: Post updated on 10/03 to reflect Q4 2014 figures.

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