How is Support of Mortgage Interest helping families from repossession

 People who lost their jobs for no fault of their own can claim mortgage interest benefits. In other words, state will help them pay their mortgage interest. This way they will keep the roof over their head while looking for alternative employment.

The mortgage interest benefits were avaiulable for mortgages up to £100,000. But home owner could not make a claim until 39 months after loosing their job.

This created 2 problems.

• With a boom in house prices in the last 10 years, a vast majority of people had mortgages far higher than the £100,000 mark.
• With the state of economy as it is, many did not have enough savings to see their lenders off for 39 weeks (or 9 months). With lenders growing increasingly impatient, many of these people were facing a real threat of repossession.

In a welcome move, government has increased the Support for Mortgage Interest from £100,000 to £200,000. The waiting list has also been decreased from 39 weeks to 13 weeks.

However eligibility for the scheme is based on the total income of the household rather than the individual. If one person in the family has lost the job and other is still employed then they must pull all their resources to get through the tough times.