If we could ignore mortgages, would Irish Household Debt be so remarkable?

Fussgangerzone

Everyone knows Irish household debt is pretty awful at the moment, and it gives certain people the excuse of blaming our behaviour as consumers for our financial woes. The truthfulness of that argument has been debated elsewhere.

Irish property prices were ridiculous, as we all know. What I'm curious of is how much of our household debts are symptomatic of those prices, rather than some aberrant consumer madness that some attribute to us.

Is is possible to get a table of EU member states' household debt put side-by-side with a table showing what that debt would be if you remove mortgages from the equation?

Geuze

http://www.centralbank.ie/polstats/stats/cmab/Pages/releases.aspx

Here is Irish credit data.

RichardAnd

This is pulling up a very dusty memory but some years ago (mid 2009, I think), I heard a radio interview in which it was claimed that the average Irish household was 15k in debt, after mortgages had been eliminated as a factor.

It struck me as a little steep and I can't provide any source so that rather anecdotal iota is all I have to offer

Geuze

Here is some data from Seamus Coffey, UCC.

http://economic-incentives.blogspot.com/2012/02/who-went-mad-borrowing.html

Fussgangerzone

RichardAnd wrote: »

This is pulling up a very dusty memory but some years ago (mid 2009, I think), I heard a radio interview in which it was claimed that the average Irish household was 15k in debt, after mortgages had been eliminated as a factor.

It struck me as a little steep and I can't provide any source so that rather anecdotal iota is all I have to offer

Yeah I've heard similar reports, closer to €10k. Similar to yourself, I haven't seen convincing figures.

antoobrien

Total lending to Irish households (September 2011) is €19.9 billion. Taking approx 1.6m households that's approx €12k per household.


Not sure if that includes the €2.65 billion includes credit card debt.

Taxi Drivers

RichardAnd wrote: »

This is pulling up a very dusty memory but some years ago (mid 2009, I think), I heard a radio interview in which it was claimed that the average Irish household was 15k in debt, after mortgages had been eliminated as a factor.

It struck me as a little steep and I can't provide any source so that rather anecdotal iota is all I have to offer

The €30 billion in the table from Geuze divided across 1.7 million households would be about €17,000 per household. Allowing for repayments since then the figure is probably around the €12,000 shown above.

daithicarr

wow with Property related loans at 143% of GDP and business loans only at 33%, how did the banks not realise one area of the economy was grossly overinflated ?

even one of the banks ?

daithicarr

daithicarr wrote: »

wow with Property related loans at 143% of GDP and business loans only at 33%, how did the banks not realise one area of the economy was grossly overinflated ?

even one of the banks ?

I recall annual reports from the OECD which said as much. They were promptly ignored, of course!

Scofflaw

daithicarr wrote: »

wow with Property related loans at 143% of GDP and business loans only at 33%, how did the banks not realise one area of the economy was grossly overinflated ?

even one of the banks ?

Because "the fundamentals were sound". So it wasn't a problem that there was a huge over-reliance on property - it just wasn't seen as "over". That it would have been a problem on some previous occasion everyone agreed, but "this time was different".

All the information was available throughout. Analyses that highlighted the issues were also available throughout.

cordially,
Scofflaw

djpbarry

Fussgangerzone wrote: »

Yeah I've heard similar reports, closer to €10k. Similar to yourself, I haven't seen convincing figures.

It doesn’t really seem all that far-fetched. Speaking anecdotally, virtually everyone I know in Ireland has a car loan, holiday loans, wedding loans or speaks forever about struggling to pay off the balance on their credit card(s). That the average is over €10k per person seems like a reasonable estimate to me, although I imagine there’s quite a broad distribution about that average.

Good loser

djpbarry wrote: »

It doesn’t really seem all that far-fetched. Speaking anecdotally, virtually everyone I know in Ireland has a car loan, holiday loans, wedding loans or speaks forever about struggling to pay off the balance on their credit card(s). That the average is over €10k per person seems like a reasonable estimate to me, although I imagine there’s quite a broad distribution about that average.

Isn't it per household rather than per person?

djpbarry

Good loser wrote: »

Isn't it per household rather than per person?

Sorry, my mistake.