Completions for borrowers with credit issues soaring

October 4, 2026 by Brendan O'Neill

Borrowers

The number of mortgage completions among people who have issues with their credit histories has reached its highest level in nearly 20 years.

This is the finding of research that was conducted by Broadstone. This company used figures from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as the basis for its research. Those figures show a total of 10,089 mortgages being sold to people with credit history issues during the course of 2025. The last year when mortgage sales of this sort exceeded 10,000 was 2008. The total for 2025 is also a 23% rise on that for the previous year.

It was during the second half of last year that the sales of mortgages to customers with flaws in their credit histories really started to spike. This six-month period accounted for 5,776 of the total number. This was a rise of 24% in comparison with the number for the second half of 2024.

What the research also shows is that there has been no drop-off since the turn of the year. The opening half of 2026 saw 5,965 products sold to borrowers with bad credit. 3,098 of those came during the second quarter, which is the highest total for one quarter since 2008 Q3.

John Barbour from Broadstone said this was an indication that lenders were showing greater understanding towards people with past credit issues.

He pointed out that there is no reason why this should prevent someone repaying a mortgage in the present.

This is a point with which any mortgage advisor with CeMAP training will fully agree.