The specialist lending forecast for 2025 has been updated to “positive” from “challenging and uncertain” forecast in 2024, The Brightstar Group chief executive officer Rob Jupp revealed.
Speaking in the opening remarks at The Specialist Lending Expo, Jupp said when this event was proposed at the start of the year, the mortgage market in January looked positive.
He explained: “With reducing swap rates and pricing fixed rate mortgage products at the lowest level since the panic of the economy following the Liz Truss mini-Budget in September 2022.”
“It all looked like it could be a better year for mortgage lenders, brokers and the UK housing market.”
However, he said: “That optimism in the first few months didn’t last long with swap rates akin to the Grand Old Duke of York, going up, down, up and down again. Adding to this there has been a General Election and a Labour majority resulting in a new Chancellor with Rachel Reeves first Budget.”
“On the world stage we had two ongoing conflicts running concurrently and if that wasn’t challenging enough, last week in the US Donald Trump won the US election.”
“Clearly, many people are very anxious right now, due to a large array of factors so it is understandable that those here today may have their heads turned negatively when starting to think about next year and beyond.”
“Although none of us have access to a crystal ball, it is important to dig down on the data and when we do there are some really positive things we can see.”
Jupp noted a money.co.uk report says commercial lending this year in the UK is projected to reach £488.1bn.
Meanwhile, small- to- medium-sized (SMEs) bank loans for 2023 were £59.2bn, a 9% decrease on the previous year, as reported by money.co.uk.
He also added that the buy-to-let (BTL) market is likely to be around £33bn at year end, which he said is up from the overstated UK Finance figures from 2023.
Using data from Knight Frank, Rightmove and UK Finance, Jupp said its expected that “between 10 million and 14 million individuals in the UK will need a specialist mortgage, equating to approximately £20bn”.
“Therefore, we have predicted a more lucrative and positive 2025”, he added.
