Six months? 12 months? No one can agree on precisely when we will finally shake off the last vestiges of the credit crunch. However, some people could be counting in years rather than months and in some cases even as many as 12 years!

Seddons litigators are already seeing a number of claims against borrowers who, having had their homes repossessed, are now being pursued for the shortfall.

In many cases the lenders have a forlorn task. Most of the sub prime borrowers had very little to start with and the combination of the recession and of having their homes repossessed is hardly likely to have resulted in an improvement in their situation. Partly for that reason other lenders are playing a waiting game.

For many of these debtors bankruptcy now would be the best option. In most cases bankruptcy will mean that the debtor whose home has been repossessed will walk away debt free in just 12 months. There were 19062 bankruptcies and 10713 IVAs (Individual Voluntary Arrangements - an alternative to bankruptcy) during the first quarter of this year (an increase of 19% on the same period last year). In fact our very short period before discharge from bankruptcy is actually bringing in bankruptcy tourists from countries like Germany and Austria where insolvency laws are much harsher.

The only surprise is that the figures aren't even higher which suggests that many borrowers do not realise the time bomb that they are sitting on. The fact is that mortgagees have a very long time to collect their debts. A mortgagee has up to 12 years to issue proceedings and time only starts running from the date the debt is called in. So for many banks the preferred option is to leave matters in abeyance and wait another five or even 10 years by which time they would hope that many or at least some of the erstwhile sub prime borrowers will be back on their feet and therefore worthwhile suing.

So whilst economists continue to argue about whether its going to be another three months, six months or a year the truth is that for many of the victims the misery caused by the credit crunch will take a very long time indeed to unravel!