New figures from UK Finance, the mortgage lenders' trade body, show a meaningful decline in both arrears and possessions among owner-occupiers, offering the clearest evidence yet that the punishing rate cycle of 2022-2024 has not translated into the wave of forced sales many analysts feared. The trade body's latest quarterly data shows homeowner mortgages in arrears of 2.5% or more of the outstanding balance fell to around 90,000 cases, down roughly 5% on the previous quarter, while early-stage possession activity dropped by a similar margin. For an industry that spent much of the past two years bracing for a repeat of the 2008-09 repossession crisis, this is unambiguously good news.