Judith Heywood, Deputy Property Editor
May 19, 2008
A debt advice charity is being overwhelmed by demands for help in some of the most affluent parts of the country. Transact, which represents more than a thousand organisations and individuals involved with people suffering financial hardship, said last night that the number of middle-class people wanting advice was rising dramatically.
Its alert came as a survey for The Times found that people attempting to escape the property crash by renting rather than buying face increases of as much as 17 per cent this year. At the same time a survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors predicted that house prices will fall by about 5 per cent and the number of housing sales could fall by 40 per cent.
Transact said that the credit crunch was leaving many professionals and homeowners unable to cope with their mounting debts, and some advice centres were having to turn people away. In affluent areas such as Haywards Heath, West Sussex, and Congleton, Cheshire, there had been a 100 per cent rise in the number of inquiries in the past year.
At the Mid-Sussex Debt Advice Centre, which serves the Haywards Heath area, the average debt of clients — excluding mortgages — is £20,000, rising to £110,000 in the most extreme cases. Emma Russell, a debt adviser, said: “I’ve had at least two clients tell me that they would have killed themselves if they hadn’t found out that we were here.”
Jamie Elliott, the co-ordinator of Transact, told the BBC: “In the past it was almost uniquely people on benefits, people in social housing, who went to debt advice agencies. Since the credit crunch started they are seeing a big increase in professional people and homeowners coming to seek help, who have just been pushed over the edge and now can’t cope with their outgoings.”!
The survey for The Times by Hometrack, the property data company, found that the cost of renting a home rose on average by 6.15 per cent in the year to April. In hotspots such as Oxford, Birmingham and London, rents rose by 17, 16 and 14 per cent respectively, while in Cambridge and Sheffield, tenants are paying an average 10 per cent more than they were in March last year.
Richard Donnell, the director of research for Hometrack, said: “The rental sector is a waiting room for the housing market and more people are being pushed into that waiting room just as rents are being forced up.”
Source:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk
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