"Mortgage debt in Britain has passed £1 trillion for the first time, the Bank of England revealed yesterday as it reported the strongest rise in new mortgage lending for two-and-a-half years.
The Bank said its seasonally adjusted figures showed total mortgage debt rose to £1.006 trillion last month, up £9.3bn from April. Analysts said it showed the housing market appeared to be in rude health in spite of higher unemployment and squeezed income growth."
£1 trillion is the same as £1,000 billion or £1,000,000,000,000. Meaningless, isn't it? But it amounts to about £17,000 per head of population, which seems rather more manageable in terms of servicing a mortgage. (Of course there are rather fewer households than population, and only some of them will have mortgages, which means that the average mortgage will be much higher but even so.) Furthermore, the overall value of private housing will be way in excess of £1 trillion, so perhaps the overall level of mortgage debt in Britain is not something to lose sleep over.
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