Money Statistics: August 2017

Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for August 2017:

Personal debt in the UK

Total UK personal debt

• The average total debt per household – including mortgages – was £57,005 in June. The revised figure for May was £56,791
• Based on June 2017 trends, the UK’s total interest repayments on personal debt over a 12 month period would have been £50.149 billion
• According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March 2017 forecast, household debt is predicted to reach £2.322 trillion in Q1 2022.
• Average consumer credit borrowing stood at £3,880 per UK adult. This is up from a revised £3,860 in May

Consumer credit debt 

• Outstanding consumer credit lending was £199.7 billion at the end of May 2017. This is up from £184.9 billion at the end of May 2016, and is an increase of £285.39 for every adult in the UK. Per household, that’s an average consumer credit debt of £7,370 in May, up from a revised £7,320 in April – and £545.17 extra per household over the year. It also means the average consumer credit borrowing stood at £3,858 per UK adult. This is up from a revised £3,832 in April. Total credit card debt in March 2017 was £68.23bn. Per household this is £2,518 – for a credit card bearing the average interest, it would take 25 years and 11 months to repay if you made only the minimum repayment each month.
• The minimum repayment in the first month would be £60 but reduces each month. If you paid £60 every month, the debt would be cleared in around 5 years and 4 months.

Net lending and write-offs 

• Total net lending to individuals by UK banks and building societies rose by £5.2 billion in May 2017 – or £173m a day.
• Net mortgage lending rose by £3.5 billion in the month; net consumer credit lending rose by £1.7 billion.
• In Q1 2017 they wrote off £530 million (of which £394 million was credit card debt) amounting to a daily write-off of £7 million.

Student loans In 2015/16

• The average maintenance loan awarded for full-time undergraduates from England was £4,000, and the average maintenance grant awarded to successful applicants was £2,983.
• The average debt owed per student at the end of 2013/14 was £12,651 (this is debt for English students and EU students in England, including loans for Further and Higher Education. It doesn’t include ‘mortgage-style’ loans, as these were sold by Government in May 2013).
• The average debt for the 2016 cohort which most recently entered repayment was £24,640. – this is the last group who will not have paid £9,000 tuition fees.

Advice, insolvency, and the courts

• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales dealt with 392,237 issues in April 2017.
• Debt was the second largest advice category (behind benefits and tax credits) with 104,201 issues. This is 18% down on the same month last year.
• Debt issues represented 27% of all problems dealt with over the period. Based on figures for April 2017, Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales are dealing with 3,473 debt problems every day.
• There were 24,531 individual insolvencies in England and Wales in Q1 2017. This is equivalent to 273 people a day or, one person every 5 minutes 17 seconds. This was up 7% on the previous quarter and up 16% on the same period a year ago.
• Every day, on average, 43 people were made bankrupt, 68 Debt Relief Orders were granted, and 162 Individual Voluntary Arrangements were entered into.
• In the 12 months ending Q1 2017, 1 in 492 adults (0.2% of the adult population) became insolvent.
• 3,321 Consumer County Court Judgements (CCJs) were issued every day in the six months to Q1 2017. The average value of a Consumer CCJ in Q1 2017 was £1,495.

Spending and Loans

• During May 2017 an average of 535 purchases were made in the UK every second using debit and credit cards, based on figures from the UK Cards Association
• In Q1 2017, households in the UK spent £92m a day on water, electricity and gas – or £3.40 per household per day
• In June 2017 the average price of unleaded petrol fell by 0.1 ppl (pence per litre) to 116.4ppl .This meant it cost £58.20 to fill a 50 litre unleaded tank.

How we spend

• During March 2017 an average of 528 purchases were made in the UK every second using debit and credit cards, based on figures from the UK Cards Association.
• An average of £22,299 was spent every second using debit and credit cards.
• Purchases using plastic cards were worth £1.93 billion every day during March.
• In total, 120 purchases using credit cards were made every second, worth £6,443. Meanwhile, data from LINK shows that, on average, 101 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in May 2017
• In total, cash machine transactions were worth an average of £4,126 per second.
• LINK’s transaction figures do not include transactions or withdrawals made by customers at their own bank’s or building societies’ ATMs.

What we buy

• In Q4 2016, households in the UK spent £97.55m a day on water, electricity and gas – or £3.61 per household per day.
• In May 2017 the average price of unleaded petrol fell by 2.4 ppl (pence per litre) to 116.3ppl.
• This meant it cost £58.15 to fill a 50 litre unleaded tank.
• The average price of diesel fell to 117.4ppl.
• According to the AA, it costs 51.60 pence per mile to run a car. This is based on buying a new petrol car for between £13,000 and £18,000, replacing it after 4 years, and averaging 10,000 miles per year.
• Do 30,000 miles per year in a car that cost less than £13,000 and the cost falls to 25.46ppm
• Do 5,000 miles per year and spend £25,000 – £32,000 on the vehicle and the cost soars to 126.04ppm.
• LV’s ‘Cost of a Child’ report estimates that parents now spend a record £231,843 on raising a child to their 21st birthday – £30.23 a day. This is up 1.1% compared to last year, and has increased 65.1% since the study first began in 2003.
• Education and childcare are the main areas of expenditure, costing £74,430 and £70,466. • The cost of education (including uniforms, after-school clubs and university costs) has increased 128% since 2003, while the cost of childcare has risen by 77.9%.
• Households now spend 38% of their annual income on raising a child.

The cost of credit

• The average interest rate on credit card lending bearing interest was 18.21% in May. This is 17.96% above the Bank of England Base Rate (0.25%).
• British Bankers Association figures show that 56.9% of credit card balances were bearing interest in May 2017.
• The average APR for a £5,000 personal loan is 7.85%, according to the Bank of England. For a £10,000 loan it’s 3.81%, while the average rate for an overdraft is 19.70%.

• The average mortgage interest rate was 2.57% at the end of June. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £3,112 in mortgage interest over the year
• According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, gross mortgage lending in June totaled an estimated £22.1 billion
  This is 9% up on June 2016, and up an 3% rise from May
• Halifax said that average house prices fell by £2,125 in June 2017. This is a monthly fall of 1%; prices fell by 0.1% over the quarter but rose by 2.6% over the year

Mortgage debt

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1.338 trillion at the end of May.
• This is up from £1.304 trillion a year earlier.
• That means that the estimated average outstanding mortgage for the 11.1m households with mortgage debt was £120,512 in May.
• The average mortgage interest rate was 2.58% at the end of May. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £3,109 in mortgage interest over the year.
• For new loans, the average mortgage interest rate was 2.06%. Using the latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, this means new mortgages would attract an average of £3,325 in interest over the year.
• According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, gross mortgage lending in May totalled an estimated £20.1 billion.  This is 12% up on May 2016, but up an 12% fall from April.
• The Financial Conduct Authority reports that 62.98% of mortgage lending in Q1 2017 was for 75% or less of a property’s value.
• 4.52% of lending was for mortgages for over 90% of a property’s value.
• There were 46,456 loans approved for house purchase in May, according to the British Bankers Association (BBA), almost unchanged from a year earlier. The average loan approved for house purchase rose to £193,900.

House prices 

• Nationwide estimate that house prices rose by 1.1% during June 2017, and were up 3.1% on 12 months ago.
• Halifax said that average house prices rose by £851 in May 2017. This is a monthly rise of 0.4%; prices fell by 0.2% over the quarter but rose by 3.3% over the year.

First-time buyers

• The Office of National Statistics say that the average house price for first-time buyers was £185,266 in April 2017, which is an annual increase of 5%.
• According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), the typical first-time buyer deposit in February was 15.2% (around £28,933) – 108% of an average salary.
• The average first-time buyer borrowed 3.57 times their income and the average first-time buyer loan was an estimated £136,50

Renting 

• The median rent in England across all property types for the 12 months to March 2017 was £650, data from the Valuation Office Agency shows. In London this was £1,452.
• For a single room, the average monthly rent was £360 – in London this was £585 (63% higher).
• The average monthly rent for a two-bedroom house in England was £600 – in London this was £1,500 (150% higher). According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in Great Britain rose by 1.8% in the 12 months to May 2017.
• Rental prices increased in all the English regions over the year to May 2017, with the South East seeing the biggest increase (2.8%) and the North East seeing the lowest rise (0.6%).
• Figures from DCLG show that in 2014/15, private renters spent an average of £797 a month on rental payments, while owner-occupiers paid £663 in mortgage payments.
• These figures are the mean payments, so can be skewed by very high figures.
• Inclusive of all benefits, private renters spent an average of 41% of their income on rental payments. Owner-occupiers spent on average 18%. Weekly rents in the social housing sector were £106 for housing association renters and £95 for local authority renters.
• 34% of households owned their home outright, while 29% were mortgagors. 20% rent privately, and 17% pay a social rent.
• 2012/13 was the first year ever there outright owners where the largest tenure group.
• The rate of private renting is the highest it has been since the 1960s.

Arrears and repossessions

• According to the Financial Conduct Authority, at the end of Q1 2017 there were 226,829 mortgage loan accounts with arrears of more than 1.5% of the current loan balance.
• This is largely unchanged on the previous quarter.
• 60.42% of payments due for loans in arrears were received in Q1 2017.
• The Council of Mortgage Lenders reports that 92,600 (0.84%) of mortgages had arrears equivalent to at least 2.5% of the outstanding mortgage balance in Q1, a small quarterly fall (from 94,100 in Q4). Since the end of Q1 2016, this figure has dropped by 1 a day.
• The Council of Mortgage Lenders estimates that 5,100 owner-occupied properties were taken into possession in the year to March 2017.
• This equates to 14 properties being repossessed every day, or one property being repossessed every one hour, 43 minutes.
• Every day in Q1 2017, 63 mortgage possession claims were issued and 34 mortgage possession orders were made.
• 391 landlord possession claims were issued and 289 landlord possession orders were made every day.

A full report of the statistics can be found here.