Mortgages of £500,000 or more rise 24% in 2025, Savills says
Savills says 62,391 loans of £500,000 or more were issued in 2025, with growth since 2021 coming from outside London and the South East.
Lenders issued 62,391 mortgages of £500,000 or more across the UK in 2025, according to research from Savills based on FCA lending data. That was 5.8% of all mortgage lending, or about one in every 17 mortgages.
The 2025 total was 24% up on 2024, Savills said, though volumes are still 9% below their 2022 peak.
London is still the biggest market for loans of this size, with 42% of them in 2025. However, Savills found the number issued in the capital has dropped by 2.4% since 2021, and the South East has seen a fall of 2.3% over the same period.
Outside Southern England, the number of mortgages of £500,000 or more has grown by 18% since 2021. The Midlands recorded a 17% increase and the North of England 16%, while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together saw the largest rise, at 28%.
According to Savills, higher house prices and the equity households have built up in their homes mean people now need to borrow more in places where half-million-pound loans used to be rare. This growth has come even though the yearly cost of servicing a new £500,000 mortgage has climbed 36%, from £25,100 in August 2021 to £34,100, the firm said.
Lucian Cook, head of residential research at Savills, said: "The half-million-pound mortgage is no longer solely the preserve of buyers in London and the South East." He added that more flexible affordability stress testing had helped more higher-earning households get loans of £500,000 and above, and that private banks at the top end of the market can take a more flexible approach than mainstream lenders.
