Phoebus comment on Mortgage Lenders and Administrators Statistics Q4 2025

10 March 2026

Richard Pike, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Phoebus:

“There’s no doubt the uncertainty in the run-up to the November budget was a contributory factor to the mortgage market slowing down in the final quarter of the year. “A large number of households put their plans on hold in anticipation of what was going to be announced by Rachel Reeves, which we can see in the latest set of figures from the Bank of England.

“The value of new mortgage commitments fell by 11.9% from the previous quarter, the largest decrease since Q3 2023, while the value of gross mortgage advances decreased by 1.3%. While the base rate reduction in December re-established momentum in the market, it wasn’t enough to deliver a meaningful increase by the end of the year.

“Positively however both figures were higher than the previous year, and the outstanding value of all residential mortgage loans increased by 0.8% from the previous quarter to £1,734.4 billion, the highest stock of outstanding mortgage loans since reporting began in 2007.

“Q4 saw an increase in the proportion of high loan to income lending to 46.5%, the highest since 2022 Q4, as lenders continued to relax lending criteria. The welcome news from these figures is that arrears rates continue to fall, showing that households are managing their finances. The warning sign for lenders will be if this figure starts to rise, and then servicing teams will need to be ready to support customers who may be in financial difficulty. “