State of Remortgaging UK 2026

Methodology

The dataset comprises 15,243 remortgage enquiries submitted via RemortgageSaver between 1 January 2025 and 31 December 2025. Each enquiry includes demographic fields (age, household income band, dependants), property fields (type, region, estimated value, original purchase date, current outstanding balance), the existing mortgage deal (lender, product type, deal rate, deal end date) and the applicant's stated reason for remortgaging. Where an enquiry resulted in a completed application, additional outcome fields are populated (new lender, new rate, new product type, new term, new balance including any capital raised, completion date, fees paid).

Of the 15,243 enquiries, 9,872 (64.8%) completed within the observation window. A further 2,104 (13.8%) were still in progress at the data cut. The remaining 3,267 (21.4%) either did not proceed (often because the applicant chose to product-transfer with their existing lender without a broker, or because the market rate at the point of decision did not justify the switch against early repayment charges) or were declined. The reported savings figures are based only on the 9,872 completed remortgages.

All savings figures compare the monthly and lifetime interest cost of the applicant's prior deal (assuming revert-to-SVR at deal end) against their new deal over the initial fixed period and, where relevant, over the full mortgage term. Interest rates on the SVR counterfactual are based on the applicant's actual lender's published SVR at the time of completion. Regional and demographic cuts use the ONS mid-2025 population estimates as a denominator where a rate (rather than an absolute) is quoted.

The report is produced by the RemortgageSaver data and editorial teams. It is not audited. We have made every effort to ensure comparability with equivalent UK Finance and BoE figures, but differences in definitions (e.g. what counts as a product transfer, how capital raising is treated) mean our figures should be compared directly to our prior-year report rather than to national aggregates.

Headline Findings

Seven numbers that define the UK remortgage market in 2025–2026:

• £287 — average monthly payment increase. For households moving off a pre-2023 fix onto a current market rate. The bad news: payment shock is real and continuing. The good news: it is smaller than in 2024 (£342) because new-deal rates have fallen.
• £2,176 — average annual saving versus SVR. The typical completed remortgage via our platform saved the household £2,176 per year in year one relative to their lender's SVR. Over a 5-year fix that is a £10,880 lifetime saving.
• 68% — share remortgaging because a fixed rate is ending. The largest single driver. Other reasons: debt consolidation (14%), home improvements (11%), other/capital raising (7%).
• 71% LTV — average completed LTV. Down from 74% in 2024. Households are putting equity into the remortgage where possible to access cheaper LTV bands.
• 19.4 years — average remaining term. 52% of completing households shortened their term at remortgage; 14% extended; 34% kept it the same.
• 58% — chose 5-year fixed rates. Up from 42% in 2024, reflecting confidence that the easing cycle is shallow and budget certainty is worth more than optionality at these rate levels.
• 17 days — median time from enquiry to agreement in principle. Down from 22 days in 2024 as digital case packaging and open banking income verification became more widely adopted.

Who is Remortgaging in 2026?

The demographic profile of the 2025–2026 remortgaging cohort is meaningfully different from the 2022–2023 cohort. The median age has risen, the share of households with dependants has fallen, and the share of higher-income households has risen sharply — consistent with the observation that payment shock affects everyone but the ability to actually remortgage successfully is increasingly concentrated among higher-earning households.

Demographic	Share of completions 2025	Share of completions 2024	YoY change
Age 25–34	11.2%	13.8%	-2.6 pp
Age 35–44	32.4%	31.9%	+0.5 pp
Age 45–54	31.8%	29.4%	+2.4 pp
Age 55–64	18.1%	17.2%	+0.9 pp
Age 65+	6.5%	7.7%	-1.2 pp

Household income distribution (completed remortgages):

Household income band	Share 2025	Share 2024
Under £40,000	9.8%	14.2%
£40,000–£60,000	19.4%	22.1%
£60,000–£80,000	22.8%	23.4%
£80,000–£120,000	26.1%	23.8%
£120,000–£200,000	15.9%	12.3%
Over £200,000	6.0%	4.2%

Property type:

Property type	Share of completions 2025
Semi-detached house	32.1%
Detached house	22.7%
Terraced house	24.3%
Flat / apartment (leasehold)	14.8%
Flat / apartment (share of freehold)	2.9%
Bungalow	2.4%
Other	0.8%

Employment status: 74.3% employed (PAYE), 18.1% self-employed (sole trader or limited company director), 5.2% retired, 2.4% other (including contractors paid gross). Self-employment representation is slightly above the ONS national average (17.2%) because self-employed households are more likely to use a broker rather than apply direct to their incumbent lender.

What Are Households Actually Saving?

Two measures of saving matter: the saving versus SVR (the counterfactual if the household did nothing and reverted to their lender's standard variable rate at deal end) and the saving versus the incumbent lender's product transfer offer. Most press coverage focuses on the first because it is larger and more dramatic; we report both because the second is the more honest measure of what a broker or comparison service actually adds.

Saving measure (2025 completions)	Median	Mean	25th–75th percentile
Monthly saving vs SVR	£174	£181	£92 – £263
Annual saving vs SVR	£2,088	£2,176	£1,104 – £3,156
5-year saving vs SVR	£10,440	£10,880	£5,520 – £15,780
Monthly saving vs incumbent PT offer	£31	£37	£12 – £58
Annual saving vs incumbent PT offer	£372	£444	£144 – £696
5-year saving vs incumbent PT offer	£1,860	£2,220	£720 – £3,480

The substantial gap between the two — the median household saves an extra £31 per month, or £372 per year, by shopping the market rather than accepting their incumbent lender's product transfer — is the single strongest economic case for using a whole-of-market broker.

Savings by prior deal rate. The largest savings accrue to the smallest group — those who had been on SVR for some time before triggering a remortgage. This cohort is typically older, often post-retirement, and historically under-served by the market.

Prior deal rate bucket	Share of completions	Mean monthly saving vs prior deal
On SVR at completion	8.4%	-£491 (i.e. payment falls)
Fix <2.0%	31.2%	+£312 (payment rises)
Fix 2.0%–2.9%	22.7%	+£187
Fix 3.0%–3.9%	11.3%	+£62
Fix 4.0%–4.9%	14.1%	-£18
Fix 5.0%+	12.3%	-£104

Why Are Households Remortgaging?

The stated primary reason for remortgaging, from the 9,872 completed cases, is shown below. These are mutually exclusive — each case is allocated to the single best-fit reason based on the applicant's own declaration and the amount of additional borrowing raised.

Reason	Share 2025	Share 2024	YoY change
Fixed-rate deal ending (rate switch only)	68.0%	64.3%	+3.7 pp
Debt consolidation (incl. additional borrowing)	14.0%	16.1%	-2.1 pp
Home improvements (incl. additional borrowing)	11.0%	10.7%	+0.3 pp
Other capital raising (school fees, tax bill, deposit gift, etc.)	4.5%	5.9%	-1.4 pp
Product-only remortgage away from SVR (no new fix term needed)	2.5%	3.0%	-0.5 pp

The rising share driven purely by fix maturity — up nearly 4 percentage points year-on-year — reflects the bulge of 2021 five-year fixes reaching maturity during 2026. Conversely, the share driven by debt consolidation has edged down as household unsecured debt growth has slowed.

Average additional borrowing by reason (completed cases with capital raising only):

Purpose	Mean additional borrowing	Median	25th–75th percentile
Debt consolidation	£18,420	£14,000	£8,500 – £24,000
Home improvements (general)	£22,840	£18,000	£10,000 – £30,000
Home extension	£48,720	£45,000	£30,000 – £62,000
New kitchen/bathroom	£14,210	£12,500	£8,000 – £18,000
School fees	£36,400	£30,000	£18,000 – £50,000
Tax bill	£27,140	£21,000	£12,000 – £35,000
Deposit gift to child	£42,870	£40,000	£25,000 – £55,000

How Households Shop — Digital vs Broker, Time to Decision

The remortgage journey is shorter than it used to be. Digital case packaging, open banking income verification and electronic ID checks have removed days from the middle of the process. Automated valuations (AVMs) have removed days from the end.

Journey stage	2023 median	2024 median	2025 median
Enquiry to agreement in principle	28 days	22 days	17 days
AIP to formal offer	18 days	15 days	13 days
Offer to completion	34 days	31 days	28 days
Total: enquiry to completion	80 days	68 days	58 days

Channel of first contact:

First-contact channel	Share 2025	Share 2024
Price-comparison website	34.2%	38.6%
Direct online search (broker website)	28.9%	24.3%
Lender website (before choosing broker)	13.7%	15.1%
Recommendation (friend/family)	12.4%	11.2%
Existing RemortgageSaver customer (repeat)	7.1%	4.3%
Social media / content marketing	3.7%	6.5%

Advice channel at application. 86.4% of applications were advised (either fully advised by a broker or execution-only with advice available). 13.6% were execution-only without advice. The advised share rose 2.8 percentage points year-on-year as complexity (criteria-tight lenders, debt consolidation, self-employment) drove more borrowers to specialist support.

Payment Shock — The Pre-2023 Fix Cohort

The defining story of the 2025–2026 remortgage market is the pre-2023 fix cohort — households whose 5-year fix was taken out at sub-2% rates during the 2020–2021 period of 0.10% Bank Rate. For these households, the move to current market rates represents a genuine step-change in monthly costs, not just a normalisation.

Prior fix rate	Share of 2025 completions	Mean balance	Mean new rate	Mean monthly payment increase
1.25%–1.74%	7.3%	£194,820	4.41%	£328
1.75%–1.99%	11.8%	£187,410	4.38%	£306
2.00%–2.24%	12.1%	£183,620	4.36%	£272
2.25%–2.49%	10.6%	£178,940	4.34%	£241
2.50%–2.99%	12.1%	£172,810	4.32%	£204

How households respond. Payment shock forces hard choices. Of the 5,218 households in the 2025 dataset rolling off a sub-3% fix, we observe the following mitigations (non-exclusive — some households take more than one):

Mitigation strategy	Share of sub-3% roll-off cohort
Extended the mortgage term	18.2%
Consolidated unsecured debt into the remortgage	21.7%
Overpaid before the end of the deal to reduce balance	14.3%
Took a longer fix (5yr+) for budget certainty	61.4%
Switched to interest-only on part of the balance	4.1%
Used savings to reduce the loan balance at completion	23.6%
None — accepted the full payment increase	27.8%

Term extension remains controversial because, while it reduces monthly cost, it raises lifetime interest. In our dataset the median term extension was 4 years, which on a typical £180,000 balance at 4.4% over an original 18-year remaining term adds approximately £17,900 to lifetime interest cost. A broker discussion of this trade-off is strongly advised.

Credit-Impaired Cohort

A meaningful minority of applicants come to remortgage with some form of adverse credit event on file — a missed credit card payment, a default, a CCJ, a DMP (debt management plan) or historic bankruptcy. High-street lenders apply strict automated decisioning to these cases, which means specialist lenders (often building societies or non-bank lenders) handle a disproportionate share.

Credit profile at enquiry	Share of 2025 enquiries	Share of 2025 completions	Completion rate
Clean (no adverse)	73.2%	77.8%	68.9%
Minor adverse (late payment in last 12 months)	14.1%	12.3%	56.4%
Moderate adverse (default >12mo, no CCJ)	7.8%	6.1%	50.6%
Significant adverse (CCJ or DMP active)	3.6%	2.8%	50.5%
Severe adverse (bankruptcy/IVA in last 6yr)	1.3%	1.0%	49.6%

Rate uplift on the specialist shelf. Borrowers with moderate or worse adverse typically pay a rate premium versus equivalent-LTV clean applicants. The average uplift in the 2025 dataset was:

Credit profile	Mean rate uplift vs clean at same LTV
Minor adverse	+0.28%
Moderate adverse	+0.74%
Significant adverse	+1.42%
Severe adverse	+2.15%

On a £180,000 balance, that means a moderate-adverse applicant pays around £80 per month more than a clean applicant at the same LTV — a substantial premium, but typically still cheaper than reverting to SVR.

Regional Picture

Remortgage activity and outcomes vary meaningfully by region, reflecting differences in average property value, prior-deal vintage, and the local interest-rate-sensitive share of household budgets.

Region	Share of 2025 completions	Mean balance	Mean LTV	Mean monthly saving vs SVR
London	14.1%	£332,840	58%	£298
South East	18.2%	£241,720	64%	£218
South West	9.3%	£198,410	68%	£181
East Anglia	7.4%	£193,270	69%	£174
East Midlands	8.1%	£158,740	74%	£142
West Midlands	8.7%	£163,910	73%	£148
Yorkshire & Humber	7.2%	£144,320	76%	£131
North West	9.8%	£149,220	75%	£135
North East	3.4%	£121,480	77%	£109
Wales	4.6%	£142,140	74%	£128
Scotland	7.1%	£147,620	73%	£133
Northern Ireland	2.1%	£138,410	72%	£124

London's outsized share of savings in absolute terms (£298/month) reflects larger balances rather than better rates — Londoners are not getting better deals, they are getting larger deals. On a like-for-like £150,000 balance basis, regional rate differentials are less than 10 bps.

Regional completion rates. The North East and Northern Ireland had slightly higher decline rates, largely driven by lower-value properties falling below some specialist lenders' minimum loan size (typically £50,000). The South East had the fastest average time to completion (53 days) reflecting better postcode coverage of AVMs.

Year-on-Year Changes vs 2025 Report (2024 Calendar Year Data)

The 2024 edition of this report covered calendar year 2023 data. In last year's edition, published April 2025, we reported on calendar year 2024. The following table shows how the headline metrics have evolved over the past three editions.

Metric	2023 data (2024 report)	2024 data (2025 report)	2025 data (this report)
Enquiries analysed	9,412	12,681	15,243
Completion rate	61.3%	63.9%	64.8%
Mean monthly saving vs SVR	£142	£158	£181
Mean monthly payment change vs prior fix	+£492	+£342	+£287
Share choosing 5-year fix	31%	42%	58%
Share choosing 2-year fix	51%	47%	33%
Share choosing tracker	3%	5%	6%
Share consolidating debt	18%	16.1%	14.0%
Average LTV at completion	76%	74%	71%
Median time enquiry to completion	80 days	68 days	58 days
Share with adverse credit	28.4%	25.1%	26.8%

Three stand-out trends. First, payment shock on the pre-2023 fix roll-off has roughly halved from £492 to £287, because new-deal rates are 100 bps lower than they were in early 2023. Second, the shift into 5-year fixes has been dramatic — nearly doubling in two years from 31% to 58% — as households take the view that the cycle is close to its neutral rate. Third, the process has got measurably faster, with median time to completion down from 80 days to 58 days across the three annual cuts.

Expert Commentary

Three of the analysts who worked on this year's report offered their take on the key findings.

"The finding that genuinely surprised us is the gap between the savings versus SVR and the savings versus the incumbent lender's product transfer offer. £31 per month sounds small, but across the 1.6 million borrowers maturing in 2026 it is a £600 million transfer of value from households to lenders if those households don't shop around. The single best piece of consumer advice we can give a maturing borrower is: get a product transfer quote from your existing lender, then take it to a broker and see if they can beat it."

— Priya Narayan, FIA, Housing Market Analyst at RemortgageSaver

"For the credit-impaired cohort, the narrative has shifted from 'can I remortgage at all?' to 'how much is it costing me to have a blip on file?'. A 74 bps uplift for moderate adverse is a real cost — around £950 a year on a £180,000 balance — but the alternative of sitting on an 8.1% SVR is worse by a factor of about six. We see too many adverse-credit households assuming they have no options and staying on SVR by default."

— James Holloway, CeMAP, DipFA, Specialist Lending Director at RemortgageSaver

"The dataset this year is big enough that we can be confident about trends that were noisy last year. The most important of those is the rise in the 5-year fix share from 42% to 58%. Households are voting with their feet that this is close to a cycle-neutral rate. If the market-implied forward curve is right and the Bank Rate troughs at 3.75%, a 4.47% five-year fix will look well-priced in hindsight. If it's wrong and we return to 3.00%, it will look expensive. But 58% of our customers have made the call that budget certainty is worth the risk."

— Sarah Cartwright, MLIBF, Senior Mortgage Adviser at RemortgageSaver

Implications and Outlook for 2026

Four implications flow from the 2025 dataset that we believe will shape the remortgage market over the remainder of 2026 and into 2027.

1. The payment shock wave is moderating but not over. By the time the last of the 2021 five-year fixes mature (late 2026), a further roughly 900,000 households will have absorbed the transition. Based on the current new-deal rate and prior-deal rate distribution, we expect the mean monthly payment increase to continue declining through 2026 — potentially toward £240–£260 — provided the MPC delivers the cut implied by the SONIA curve.

2. The advice premium is widening. The gap between advised and execution-only outcomes, measured by rate secured and time to completion, has widened year-on-year. This reflects increased criteria complexity (self-employment, interest-only components, debt consolidation) rather than any change in rates, and supports the view that the advised channel continues to add measurable economic value.

3. Specialist lenders are taking share on the adverse credit book. Our data shows the five largest specialist lenders combined handled 71% of moderate-or-worse adverse completions in 2025, up from 64% in 2024. Expect this share to continue rising as high-street automated decisioning gets stricter post the FCA's 2024 affordability thematic review.

4. Product transfer is the default but not the best choice. 79% of maturing fixed-rate borrowers complete a product transfer with their incumbent lender (UK Finance). Our data suggests this is because of inertia rather than economics — the average external remortgage in our dataset saved £372 per year versus the same lender's PT offer. We expect increasing comparison-site and broker penetration of the PT cohort over the next 24 months.

The full dataset underlying this report is available to journalists and policymakers on request, subject to appropriate anonymisation and confidentiality safeguards. We publish the next edition of this report in April 2027.