Well said Mark, they will be taking my home literally over my dead body.

The government has socialized private bank loans into public debt resulting in the need for external assistance from the EU-IMF et al. The same principle should apply to homeowners struggling to repay their mortgages. It is not one rule for the 'elite' Bankers/Developers & another for the ordinary citizen.
With regard to alarmist claims on home repossessions, just examine the past experience in our nearest neighbour the UK, where 47,700 homes were repossessed in 2008 despite 93,533 Court Claims made by Lenders' that year & 72,235 Court Orders for immediate repossession. Their worst ever year was 1991, following the Thatcher-Lawson Property Bubble collapse, of 186,649 court cases for repossession, 142,905 were successfully won by the Bank in question, yet only 75,500 homes were actually taken off the occupiers!
The bottom line: less than half of the successful court cases by mortgage lenders actually results in a property repossession. Deals are always done. This has been the case every year since 1969 in the UK - a country with a history of repossession - unlike Ireland. UK lenders e.g. Nationwide & Halifax ended up with their own estate-agency subsidiaries. This will not happen in this country.
Realistically speaking, to take from the UK market where repossession is the norm, to extrapolate to Ireland, adjusting for population & market size where they have 15x both the number of homes & people, we can expect no more than 5,000 actual repossessions in this jurisdiction, where there is a culture of forbearance & restructuring, not to mention the possibility of some 'contingent' debt-forgiveness. Many people in negative equity have agreed 'short-sales' on their properties with their lender, funding the shortfall with an unsecured term loan.
People with negative equity will grow out of their difficulty in time. Those who have experienced job loss or loss of income and are struggling, should keep paying some amount of money each month & no Irish Judge will rule against them.
Finally, to contextualize the Irish situation properly: only 98 homes were repossessed over the last 3 months (78 forcefully, 3 voluntarily surrendered their homes, whilst another 17 homes were abandoned), this equates to <400/year. A total of 522 repossessed homes remain on the balance sheet's of Irish mortgage lenders, that's a far cry from 30,000!

Pelle, you haven't a clue what is going on do you? Where have you been since 2008? This shower of donkeys has been hacking away at my ability to pay my mortgage since then, and in case you have been in dream land the past couple of weeks they are about to push through cuts of 6bn, again attacking my ability to pay MY mortgage, think yourself lucky you are renting, but I have bad news they are going to start cutting your ability to pay your rent now, watch the budget.

Seanie Fitz [passed his leaveing cert hoorah] and was good enough to lend ye wolly headed goms all the money for Mc Mansions that ye didnt need. So now shut up and pay up. Seanie was one of yere golden Gods not too long ago. Remember the trips to N.Y.C, with yere highlighted hair and the fake tans, gold master cards by the thousand stuffed every where to buy rubbish to take home so as yere wan next door would be mad jealous as she see's yere latest model 4x4 pull up with Bloomigdales shopping bags . After all that hard work shopping in beautiful New York ye had to take a mini four or five day break in some sunny backwater town in mainland Europe to recover from the crowds in N.Y. Jazus sure put it on the card Paddy we have the rest of our lives to pay it back and isnt the house worth over 2 mil now, sure we'll be dead long enough O LADS he he he LOL LOL ha ha . Ignorant broke self pitying soon to be homeless half starved culchies is what awaits most of ye. THE partys over, Seanie and the boys want their money so pay up. Poor Seanie and poor old Drum here in the east coast is doing his very best to do a deal so as he can file suit against Anglo for cheating him. So seen as ye claim to be so educated why dont ye file a law suit THE SHEEPLE VERSES THE GOV THE BANKS AND ANYONE ELSE YE DONT WANT TO PAY BACK. Oh I forgot ye think the gov and the banks own the lawyers too. Home dopey James,its time to make your ma proud by turning out the light. THE frost makes those skyscrapers really gleam in my beautiful city of Chicago, must breathe in all that freedom as I watch my freedom loveing puppy enjoying himself. Real freedom ,only in AMERICA. Thank God there is no Mer/Noskill clowns wandering the streets of America,mabye I could teach him to turn out the light. Um wee Jimmy wouldNT like that. Last one out of that begging bowl of an island turn out the lights,,,,,,PARTY'S OVER........YUIYTG6TY

Pelle has a point. If he and others like him have to cough up to pay your mortgage Mark then in the long run he losses and you Mark have a house paid for. Right now the banks aren't lending so Pelle probably can't take advantage of the property market. Lose lose situation for Pelle.

Pelle and the gang, you consider 140,000 excessive? that is my mortgage and it rapidly becoming impossible to afford, and just how do and your lot think you will be paying my mortgage? Do you gobs..... think you are the only ones in the country paying tax?

Mark - all I'm saying is that there has to be a fair way of fixing the problem. Somewhere along the way someone got paid a lot of money for either selling land/houses or building them. Where did that money go?

Pelle, while angry, is right.

Nobody put a gun to anyones head - it was a mix of fear, greed, naivety and peer pressure that drove people to buy when they did. Suggesting otherwise is embarrassing - after all we're supposed to have one of the best educated workforces in Europe, right? We need to act like it.
Mark, I'm not sure what your point is. Pelle and the rest of us are very aware of what has happened over the last 2 years and the situation you are others like you are in. It's bad and we all know it. But you can't expect us to pay to bail you out, can you? You signed a legal contract. You.

The root cause of all of this mess is that no-one is taking responsibility for the decisions they have made. Lets start with ourselves, and learn the lessons, before we point the fingers at others. We are the People of Ireland, after all.

I am in the process of losing my house too.I did nothing wrong.all i ever did was work hard,from eight to six every day.My company went bust because of the Bankers.I will say something for sure,the Bank will not get my house in the condition I and my partner have lovingly put it.I will pull it to the ground before they get it.I have already organised digger to do it,as I used to drive them for a living.I dont fear Jail.as It is far better than what is happening in my life at present.

Pelle, I agree with you 100%, as sad as it is, I do not want to pick up the tab for someone else's Mortgage, (I will just simply not do it) I am getting it hard enough to keep food on the table as it is. Everyone went mad in the boom, led on of course by auctioneers but they took the decision themselves so now they think they can make it my problem, "no way"

Some very interesting comments from Pelle and Mark especially. I am involved in the pre-foreclosure market in the US and have experienced this space over the past couple years.
Couple points:
(a) the lack of regulation in the banking sector was the platform that lead to the irrational speculation in real estate. [Government and Bankers Fault]
(b) the herd mentality (not unique to Ireland) drove many to buy homes they could not afford and loose the run of themselves ...YES on trips to NY and condos in Portugal [Individuals have to take ownership and accountability here]

I know many people who did not get caught in the frenzy and clearly identified that what was happening was madness and was not sustainable. Banks were showering money on them to buy houses they could not afford and they said NO.

Some fallout:
(a) The US is fast becoming a renter nation (Good article: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB5...) Many people do not want the stress of owning homes they cannot afford and are not fighting the foreclosure process. This demographic change will probably occur in Ireland also. Another term for this is deed in lieu of foreclosure and it is commonly known as "giving back the keys". There is no shame in renting. Many people do not want to live in a house they will probably never pay off or pay off way too much for it.
(b) Ireland will also learn quickly what a short-sale is and renters will probably be able to pick up some excellent bargains as banks take back properties and then try and flog them on to buyers that are lucky enough to have jobs.

(c) I hope that Ireland (unlike The US) is able to put in place a fair program for people that genuinely need a little help. There are many people that want to stay in their homes. The average foreclosure here costs a bank $50K and banks and govt need to put in place a "modification program" facilitating some possible debt reduction, interest rate reduction or equity sharing arrangement to help these home owners. Pelle, you make a fair point but if you squeeze out those folks who are marginal in their ability to pay their mortgage and are genuine homeowners who are now caught up in a malaise they did not create, you will end up footing the $50K bill anyway.

The US made a complete hames of trying to provide a modification program that worked and I think this is key to real estate stability and helping normalize the most fractured part of the economy.

karl, you would be one of the people that are in the public eye that I can not stand, to me every time you open your mouth you are on an agenda for "yourself", you are in negative equity and it seems to me that you speak for yourself when you want me and everyone else to pick up the tab for your mistakes. You go on and on about the one thing and it seem to me that you protest to much, who do you think you are kidding?

I feel so very bad for people like Dermot above. Words, of course, fail us. Will we act on the truth? Politicians on all sides of the house have knowingly and shockingly failed us, for many many years, by promoting the corruption and secretly participating in the payoffs, while protecting the criminals most at fault, by refusing to enact the basic anti-corruption legislation we can see across the EU and elsewhere in the world. We are the victims of a very simple set of dirty tricks, thanks to all of them, "Garret the Good " included.
Jackasses like "pudsy ryan" anthony and his pathetic fans like Maire are only so much rotting detrius, blown along the open sewers, that now hold our former dreams of prosperity and pride. That the editors here allow them free rein to spout mindless tripe and mis-spelled rot, is perhaps merely an appropriate metaphor for our current state and standards of practice.

The other issue is that a lot of money poured into Ireland. We could have used it to build up Irish industry. Multinationals have been based here long enough for technology transfer to have taken place. But nope, we failed to make any inroads into building a tech savy economy. A complete and utter waste of 10 years and 100 billion.