It’s been revealed that mortgages cancellations grew 6.1% in the first quarter.
This is 35,144 mortgages which were cancelled according to data from the Bank of England and Novus Strategy.
The value of cancellations between January and March was up 12.3% on the comparable 2025 figure.
A statement from Novus Strategy says: “Long completion times compound the problem.
“The longer an offer sits in the pipeline, the greater the exposure to changing borrower circumstances, chain collapses and rate movements that lead to cancellation.
“The time between SSTC and exchange reached 134 days in Q1, according to TwentyCi, when 67,489 transactions fell through post-offer — down 12.1% annually.”
It continues: “Mortgages are cancelled for various reasons, and volatility such as the interest rate spike we’ve seen this year due to the Iran crisis can be a major contributory factor.
“A borrower may have multiple mortgage offers, could switch to take advantage of falling rates or back out of a sale altogether.
Excessive completion times also increase the risk that changing circumstances cause entire chains to collapse, leading to offers expiring.
“Conveyancers and estate agents have always been keen to reduce time to completion.
“More recently, lenders have turned their attention to this metric as it has far greater potential to improve margins and lower costs than time to offer.”
Novus says each of these cancellations will have incurred processing, valuation and underwriting costs regularly running into thousands of pounds per case, none of which is recoverable by lenders.
“But the operational cost is only part of the picture.
“Lenders must maintain sufficient capital and liquidity against every outstanding mortgage offer until it either completes or is cancelled.
“With £8.7 billion of approvals not taken up in a single quarter, that is a significant volume of capital committed to loans that will never be advanced.”
