Mortgagee sales continue to strike property owners who fall behind on payments, and a Wanganui broker warns more are looming.
Statistics released this week by CoreLogic show there were 103 mortgagee sales in Wanganui/Manawatu in 2014 - a slight drop from 2013 and previous years.
A mortgagee sale occurs when mortgage repayments aren't kept up and the lending bank or institution decides to sell the property to recoup its money.
Mortgagee sales in Wanganui have declined compared with 18 months to three years ago, says Property Brokers Wanganui branch manager Philip Kubiak.
"I think the reason for that is that a lot of investors who came into the market when the market was at its peak - so 2006 to 2007 - who got into trouble have just played their way through the system, through the lenders.
"Having said that, we have just been asked in the past month to appraise a number of mortgagee sales. We haven't had to do that for a while but suddenly they are starting to filter through again."
Mr Kubiak said mortgagee sales were starting to pick up again.
"We are starting to notice a bit of an increase.
"Mortgagees tend to run in cycles and there might have been a period where people, who were getting into trouble, were able to refinance and with low interest rates. Banks and lenders have probably done their best to help refinance people and help them through it so there were fewer mortgagee sales.
"Maybe this is the start of another cycle."
Nationally, there were 198 mortgagee sales in the last three months of 2014 nationwide.
That was down from 243 in the previous quarter, meaning fewer Kiwi homeowners were forced to sell their homes.
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the drop was due to an economic upturn after the protracted global financial crisis.
"The general story on mortgagee sales is positive," he said. "The figures showed a huge departure from the pits of the recession when, at one point in 2009, mortgagee sales accounted for one in 25 of all homes sold."
Now, Mr Eaqub said, only 1 per cent of houses sold were mortgagee sales.