The last twelve months in UK bridging were a record, then a reset. Completions crossed £10.03 billion in 2025, according to Octane Capital's read of the sector. That sat against £7.34 billion in 2024 and £5.76 billion in 2023. In two years the market almost doubled. That is not a specialist niche having a good year. That is short term finance becoming part of how ordinary property deals get done when the rest of the stack is too slow.
The pause started before the calendar flipped. Completions in the final quarter of 2025 came in just under £2.5 billion, a 2.1 percent dip on the quarter before. 2026 then opened quietly. First quarter completions were about £1.8 billion, down 26.5 percent on the previous quarter and 35.7 percent on the same period a year earlier. Octane's September forecast still has the full year landing around £8 billion. That would miss the 2025 peak and still leave annual activity almost 40 percent above 2023.
Volume falling from a record is not the same as demand disappearing. Bridging is doing a job the high street is slower at.
Speed is the product
Bridging Trends put average completion in 2025 at 43 days, the fastest since 2017, after 47 days in 2024 and 58 days in 2023. Three years of getting quicker is what you would expect if brokers know lender appetite better and if process, not credit, used to be the bottleneck.
2026 has been lumpier. The same series had first quarter completions stretching to 53 days, then snapping back to 46 days in the second quarter. Average monthly rates barely moved, from 0.82 percent to 0.81 percent. Average loan to value sat in the low to mid fifties. Average term stayed at 12 months. Pricing and leverage did not blow out. Time did.
When a market gets faster without getting looser, you are looking at operations, not a credit boom.
Who is actually borrowing
The FCA's February 2026 freedom of information release is useful because it is regulated stock, not a broker panel. In 2025 there were 4,691 regulated bridging sales, worth about £1.83 billion. Greater London took the most value, a little over £503 million across 773 loans. The South West took the most cases, 846. The South East sat close behind on value.
That mix should kill the idea that bridging is only a London investor product. A large slice of regulated volume is homeowners solving a sequence problem: a purchase that cannot wait, a sale that has not completed, a house that needs work before it can be let or sold.
Second quarter 2026 made that visible. Bridging Trends had loans used to stop a chain break rising from 14 percent to 18 percent of transactions. The regulated share jumped from 41 percent to 48 percent, the largest quarterly rise since early 2022. Second charge bridging went from 9 percent to 22 percent. Heavy refurbishment recovered from 6 percent to 10 percent. Business injections more than doubled, from 4 percent to 9 percent.
Wesley Davidson, a broker at Fox Davidson, put it bluntly in August: some of this is necessity. Sales are slower. People need to move, or they need to add value, and they cannot wait for the existing home to sell on a conventional clock.
Contributor gross lending still fell 15 percent in that quarter, from £199.2 million to £173.1 million. Geopolitics, including the conflict involving Iran, was cited as a reason some borrowers paused at the turn of the year. Volume can drop while the use cases get more domestic. That is a different market to the one that was mostly investment purchases, still 22 percent of first quarter cases.
What I would watch
Three things.
First, the exit. A 12 month average term is fine until refinance or sale does not show up. The 2025 growth was built on complexity and delay in the wider property market. If those delays persist into the exit, you do not get a clean refinance. You get an extension conversation.
Second, the mix. Regulated cases, second charge, and chain break work are more operationally demanding than a vanilla investment purchase. Affordability, occupation, and conduct sit closer to the surface. Lenders who treat that book like unregulated stock will find out the hard way.
Third, the factory. Completions at 43 days in 2025, then 53, then 46, tell you capacity can still wobble. Speed is underwriting, packing, valuation, and legal work happening in the right order. It is also what happens when mainstream lenders withdraw or reprice and the case lands in specialist.
Jonathan Samuels at Octane has been arguing that bridging has moved from alternative to core. I think that is right, with a caveat. Core products get treated like infrastructure. They need clean exits, honest loan to value, and a process that does not confuse a quiet quarter with a reason to loosen.
2026 looks like a reset year, not a vanishing act. The record was 2025. The test is whether the market can stay useful at £8 billion without pretending it is still running at ten.