Fingering bankruptcy hotspots by suburb

SmartCompany

South-eastern Victoria and the Mount Druitt area of Sydney have emerged as some of the country's worst areas for bankruptcies, according to the latest data released by the federal Insolvency and Trustee Service.

While a range of data shows Australians are keen on paying down debt and unemployment remains low, experts say local wealth is tied closely with property, and insolvencies may be affected as values rise and fall.

"For most Australians, the wealth is tied up in the home,” Dun & Bradstreet marketing director Damian Karmelich told SmartCompany.

"The recent 18-24 months of deleveraging is definitely going to help consumers when it comes to their debt.”

The figures show that in NSW, Campbelltown, Mount Druitt and Prestons were the most affected by insolvency actions, while in the ACT, Charnwood was the most affected.

In Victoria, Cranbourne was hit the hardest with 140 actions, while in Queensland, the Glenvale area of Toowoomba was most affected.

Salisbury North was the worst area in South Australia, while Alice Springs was the most affected in the Northern Territory. Mandurah took the top spot in Western Australia, while western Launceston was hit most in Tasmania.

Karmelich says the low unemployment rate has been able to keep many Australians out of trouble for a while. However, he also says that while many home owners are calling for lower interest rates, many should be thankful the Reserve Bank is keeping rates where they are.

"People frame those rate changes as ‘I'll save this much money per week'. But when the Reserve Bank drops interest rates, they're concerned about the underlying strength of the economy.”

"This deleveraging of debt that people have been doing is great… but it's not going to help the economy, particularly on the spending side of things.”

The top areas for personal bankruptcy actions organised by state:

NSW

Victoria

Queensland

ACT

Northern Territory

Western Australia

Tasmania

About the data:

This data has been compiled by the Insolvency and Trustee Service, which describes this as "experimental data”.

SmartCompany has combined three separate metrics in order to calculate these lists – bankruptcies, debt agreements and personal insolvency agreements. A detailed breakdown of how each action works is available here on the ITSA website here.

This article first appeared on SmartCompany on April 11. Republished with permission.