Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for May 2017:
Personal debt in the UK
People in the UK owed £1.529 trillion at the end of March 2017. This is up from £1.484 trillion at the end of March 2016 – an extra £886.84 per UK adult.
The average total debt per household – including mortgages – was£56,632 in March. The revised figure for February was £56,448.
According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March 2017 forecast, household debt is predicted to reach £2.322 trillion in Q1 2022. This makes the average household debt £86,001 (assuming that the number of households in the UK remained the same between now and then).
Total credit card debt in March 2017 was £67.6bn. Per household this is £2,504.
Spending and Loans
During February 2017 an average of 553 purchases were made in the UK every second using debit and credit cards, based on figures from the UK Cards Association.
In total, cash machine transactions were worth an average of £4,271 per second.
The average interest rate on credit card lending bearing interest was 18.18% in March. This is 17.93% above the Bank of England Base Rate (0.25%).
The average APR for a £5,000 personal loan is 9.54%, according to the Bank of England. For a £10,000 loan it’s 3.73%, while the average rate for an overdraft is 19.70%.
Mortgages, rent and housing
The average mortgage interest rate was 2.61% at the end of March. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £3,138 in mortgage interest over the year.
According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, gross mortgage lending in March totaled an estimated £21.4 billion.
There were 48,178 loans approved for house purchase in March.
Halifax said that average house prices fell by £84 in March 2017. This is a monthly rise of 0%; prices rose by 0.1% over the quarter and rose by 3.8% over the year.
