Either way, the banks themselves expect more repossessions to take place.
It is not, because the boom in British house prices has helped drive repossessions to unusually low levels.
In the US, he said, debt issues had moved from mortgage arrears and repossessions to defaults and write-offs on car loans and credit cards.
However, Saccacio expected the number of repossessions to slow in October, because of the moratorium some lenders have imposed while they investigate whether they followed procedures correctly.
The lenders' group expects repossessions to hit 35,000 by the end of the year.
By their reckoning, a resolution to these outstanding issues needs to be quickly achieved in order to save potentially hundreds of thousands of homeowners from foreclosure and to allow proper home repossessions to fully resume.
If we were to take the advice of our Conservative opponents we would withdraw the support now available to homeowners, and do nothing to prevent repossessions rising to the rates of the 1990s.
Housing Minister Mark Prisk said: "I would urge anyone with financial difficulties to seek advice from their lender early, so that repossession continues to remain the last resort".
Bottom line, you would have fewer defaults, fewer repossession additions to the housing inventory, and increased confidence that the crisis was ending.
A spokesperson for GMAC successor Ally said the company "requires its third party repossession agencies to follow certain procedures and all applicable laws when recovering a vehicle.
