Bad News In Ireland-Home Mortgage Edition

Irish Times:

ALMOST 155,000 mortgage holders are now struggling to repay their homeloan each month.
New figures show that one-in-five homeowners across the country are in trouble with their mortgage repayments. First-time buyers tend to be the worst affected by home-loan difficulties, especially those who bought between 2005 and 2008.
Almost 63,000 homeowners are in arrears for three months or more. On top of this, close to 70,000 people have been forced to do deals with their lenders to lower monthly repayments.

When other homeowners who are in arrears for less than three months are added in, it means that one-in-five mortgage holders are struggling to pay their mortgage, Central Bank figures quoted in the latest International Monetary Fund report on Ireland reveal.

Ouch.  Looks like there's going to be another leg down in the Irish real estate market.  We've got a long way to go before we work our way out of the economic mess, despite the rosier economic numbers in the U.S.