Six per cent of individuals utilized credit cards to make mortgage or rent payments in the last year.
People striving to meet their mortgage repayments may possibly discover that an unsecured loan can aid to ease the pressure of their financial circumstances.
A study commissioned by Roof, the housing charity Shelter's magazine, identified that six per cent of men and women had paid their mortgage or rent by credit card within the past 12 months - equivalent to one million households.
The survey observed that individuals of all income levels are struggling to shell out their housing bills and are converting to credit cards as a short-term fix. Eight per cent of working class people quizzed by researchers admitted to using credit cards to spend their mortgage or rent, while four per cent of middle class respondents had done the same thing.
Kay Boycott, Shelter's director of policy and campaigns, referred to the statistics as "shocking" and recommended that people who had used credit cards to spend their housing costs must have been serious.
"If people are already struggling to the extent that they fear losing their home, increasing credit card debt cannot be the answer," she said.
Her advice isn't a reference on the fact that credit cards may be one of the most expensive techniques to borrow funds if balances are left to build-up over a number of many months. Alternatively her problem is about the techniques bank card organizations are permitted to use to recover dollars from debtors unable to repay their debts.
Bank card organizations can get a charging order on the debtor's property in the occurrence of defaults on settlements. This can consequently lead to a possession order and also the borrower losing their residence if they are unable to discover the money to pay out off their debts.
Rather than taking the unwise step of using a bank card to pay out the mortgage, homeowners who are struggling financially must, obviously, begin by getting in touch with their lender to express the complications they are having and ask for assist.
If that fails to ease the predicament, they might come across that an unsecured loan is really a much less risky way to borrow the cash they need to create their mortgage repayment demands.
Although high street banks are less likely to approve an unsecured loan for a person who is having difficulties to meet their mortgage commitments, expert brokers have products designed to guide individuals in that circumstance.
For instance, a guarantor loan is accessible to anyone, irrespective of his or her credit rating score, who can find another person prepared to guarantee the repayment schedules.