The value of abandoned mortgages totalled £32.4bn in 2025, jumping by 36% year-on-year, Novus Strategy has found.

In its analysis of data from the the Bank of England, the homebuying and selling transformation consultancy said this increase was partly due to worsening fall-throughs of property sales.

In 2025, the number of cancellations recorded by lenders rose by 26.4% to 134,057.

Novus Strategy said that cancellations are an unwelcome expense for lenders, as they will not have only gone through a costly application, valuation and underwriting process on each loan, but exposure to long pipelines result in higher capital usage and tighter liquidity.

Furthermore, it stated that delays increase the chances that career moves, life events, a lack of upfront property information and changing family, credit and financial circumstances cause chains to collapse. This costs UK businesses billions of pounds each year.

Recent data has shown that the number of fall-throughs of property transactions increased by 4.5% to 303,538 in 2025.

Chief executive officer at Novus Strategy, Claire Van der Zant, said: “Avoidable fall-throughs cost the property industry as a whole billions of pounds a year and lenders will want to see these numbers coming down.

“While the myriad reasons that property transactions fall through may sound uncontrollable, the most powerful thing we can do to mitigate this is increase the speed at which transactions can complete. Everyone in the industry is acutely aware of this and it relies on moving out of the first phase of transformation, where business focused on internal digitalisation, to the second phase where we horizontally integrate for interoperability.

“This second phase is already happening through the work of MHCLG, DPMSG, OPDA and CFIT. Together, the industry is rewriting the fabric of the home buying industry using data standards, trust frameworks and smart data pilots. The acid test will be that transaction times become a customer choice, not an excruciating six months of uncertainty."

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