Irish long-term mortgage arrears fell 16 per cent last year amid regulatory pressure for lenders to resolve more difficult cases, declining interest rates among nonbank lenders, and rising house prices.
The number of owner-occupier loans where borrowers are more than a year behind in repayments declined by 3,087 accounts to 16,115 – or 2.2 per of all home loans in the market – by the end of December, the Central Bank said on Friday.
This marks the lowest level since the regulator started publishing quarterly arrears data in 2009, following the property crash.
The number of principal dwelling house accounts in arrears over 90 days was 21,833 at the end of last year, accounting for 3.1 per cent of all loans, continuing a long trend of decline that began in 2013, when almost 13 per cent were in default.
RM Block
The Central Bank has been pushing lenders in recent years to resolve long-term arrears.
Mortgage rates also declined in 2025, particularly among non-banks. Pepper Advantage, the mortgage services provider used by a number of investment funds for Irish loans acquired after the financial crash, cut some of the highest variable rates in the market between late 2024 and the middle of last year as the European Central Bank lowered official rates.
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Ongoing house price increases also increased options for borrowers in long-term arrears. Residential values rose 7 per cent last year, according to the Central Statistics Office, to leave Dublin prices and the national index 10 per cent and 25 per cent above their 2007 peak, respectively.
At the end of last year, 75 per cent of all owner-occupier loans that were at least 90 days in arrears were owned by non-banks.
There were 698,445 private residential mortgage accounts for principal dwellings held in the Republic of Ireland at the end of the period, with a total outstanding balance of €109 billion.
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Accounts in long-term mortgage arrears, had an outstanding balance of €3.9 billion, which accounted for 83 per cent of balance on all accounts in arrears over 90 days.
A total stock of 54,488 home loans were categorised as restructured at end-December 2025, 8 per cent of all loans. Some 84 per cent of the restructure loans were not in arrears, while 88 per cent were meeting the terms of their current restructure arrangement.
The two most common restructure types were split mortgages, where repayments on a part of the loan are put on ice for a period, and arrears capitalisation arrangements, where arrears are added to the total principal owed.
Meanwhile, there were 47,320 residential mortgage accounts for Irish buy-to-let (BTL) properties in the market, with an outstanding balance of €6.6 billion.
Of the total BTL stock, 4,616 accounts, or 10 per cent, were more than 90 days in arrears, marking a decrease of 1,180 accounts in annual terms.
BTL accounts in arrears of over one year numbered 3,975, or 8 per cent, of all such mortgages. The outstanding balance on these accounts was €1.4 billion at end-December, 22 per cent of the total outstanding balance on all BTL mortgage accounts.
