First-time buyers borrow more to get on the ladder

By Scott Craig

More first-time buyers took out a mortgage of at least 4.5 times income in 2025.

The number of UK first-time buyers with a loan to income ratio 4.5 times income or greater rose to 45,800 in 2025, up from 27,500 in 2024. A jump of 66%.

The number of people borrowing 5.5 times income rose even more sharply from 420 to 4,628. This is from a total of 380,716 UK first time buyers.

The jump is a being attributed to changes to mortgage lending rules, which now allow individual lenders to bypass the 15% cap on high loan to income loans

This change allowed lenders focusing on first time buyers to offer higher multiple mortgages to more people and first time buyers responded in droves.

Sources

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