Housing is perhaps one of the most basic human needs. It is little wonder, therefore, that the security of having somewhere to live may feature so high on the list of so many people’s worries and concerns. Whilst there may be ample evidence for such fears to be well-founded, there is also hope and reassurance provided by some of the measures that may help safeguard your needs:

The evidence

• you probably don’t have to be that avid a reader of the financial pages of the newspapers to guess that the UK’s housing market is in the doldrums;
• whether you are a seller or a buyer, popular sentiment seems to advise against entering the housing market in recent years;
• official, government statistics seem to back up such impressions;
• figures released by the Department for Communities and Local Government, for example, show a house price index that has remained more or less stagnant in recent years;
• yet the same government department records that in 2010 (the most recent year for which statistics are available) national average mortgage repayments accounted for more than 16% of the average household’s income;
• for those individuals wanting to buy, moreover, the statistics suggest an all-time high in mortgage lenders’ demands for deposits of an average of 35% of the purchase price of the home;
• together with widespread economic difficulties in other sectors of the economy, actions for the repossession of residential properties by both mortgage lenders and landlords reached some 142,088 in 2011, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government;

The safeguards

• with statistics such as these, you may not want to be thrown on the mercies of the present housing market;
• if you already have a mortgage, therefore, you might welcome any help at all in ensuring that you keep your repayment instalments fully up to date, whatever other life’s misfortunes might lie in store;
• in other words, you might welcome the safeguards which products such as Drewberry mortgage insurance might bring;
• just as the name suggests, this is insurance that helps you to meet your mortgage repayments at those times when you might otherwise be facing a seemingly impossible struggle;
• mortgage life insurance, for example, works on the simple and straight forward principle of insuring your life – if you die at any time within the insurance term, the policy pays out a guaranteed, lump sum benefit, typically intended to pay off the mortgage for the benefit of your surviving loved ones;
• mortgage payment protection insurance, on the other hand, may help to ensure that your mortgage continues to be paid (for up to a maximum of 12 or 24 months, depending on the cover you choose), if you are unable to work because of an accident, sickness or involuntary redundancy.

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/141272.xls

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/141299.xls

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/table1301.xls