Demand for mortgage debt advice soars amid cost-of-living crisis

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) has seen a big increase in traffic to their website pages for advice on mortgage debt. From June 2021 to June 2022 the views of the webpages ‘Schemes that can help you pay your mortgage’ and ‘Selling your home to pay your mortgage debts’ have increased by 53% and 81% respectively.

Most shockingly the views for the webpage ‘What to do if you can’t pay your mortgage’ have shot up 1,627%, a sixteen-fold increase for the same period.

Advice given by CAB on mortgage arrears has increased by 10% just in the last month from June to July, and is up 24% from 2021/22 to July 2022.

This comes before the Bank of England’s 0.5% interest rate hike to 1.75% on the 4th of August, which is expected to lead to further affect those already experiencing difficulties with mortgage payments and other debt. 

CAS social justice senior policy officer, Aoife Deery, said: “We are seeing soaring demand online and across the Citizens Advice Bureau network from people struggling to pay their mortgage.

“This has been a growing problem for a while, with steady incremental increases in demand over the past year.

“The increase in interest rates coupled with the general impact of rising inflation risks supercharging this problem and we anticipate starting to see large groups of people unable to pay their mortgage.

“That can be a really scary prospect, and people who are struggling with money should understand they aren’t on their own – the Citizens Advice network is here to help. Lenders legally have to treat you fairly and consider any request you make to change the way you pay your mortgage. They are expected to do everything they can to come to a payment arrangement and repossessing your home should be the last resort.

“People can check our advice online or speak to their local CAB. The network helped over 171,000 people last year, with a further 2.5 million people checking our online advice pages. We’re for everyone regardless of background or circumstance and we don’t judge, we just help.”