There has been a big shift in how UK owners are utilizing fairness launch, based on new evaluation.
A examine of greater than 1,000 Key Group buyer circumstances agreed between Q2 2024 and Q1 2025 (information to 31 March 2025) exhibits that the proportion of latest plans taken out primarily to repay an current mortgage surged from 36% to 63% over the interval. The findings recommend owners are more and more counting on housing wealth to assist and stabilise their funds.
Mortgage reimbursement firmly turned the dominant driver of fairness launch exercise, rising from 36% to 63% year-on-year. In the meantime, discretionary makes use of fell sharply: house enhancements dropped from 14% to five%, property purchases from 7.9% to below 2%, and car purchases from 7.7% to three.9%. Gifting fluctuated all year long (5.6% → 12.4% → 9.1%), allocations in direction of different money owed climbed (2.7% → 9.1%), and spending on holidays additionally elevated (3.2% → 7.6%).
London owners launched a mean of £145,471 per plan in 2025 — greater than double the regional UK common and the best within the nation. The determine is up by greater than £27,000 on the earlier yr, highlighting how the capital’s property market continues to generate the most important withdrawals.
Most clients used fairness launch to satisfy a couple of monetary want. Round a 3rd (31.6%) devoted the funds to a single goal, normally mortgage reimbursement or debt consolidation. An extra 32.7% break up their launch throughout two priorities, 21.6% throughout three, and 9.5% allotted funds throughout 4 or extra makes use of.
In response to the most recent Key Group information, the typical buyer is 69 years outdated, predominantly feminine and leveraging fairness launch as a mainstream possibility in later-life monetary planning:
Common buyer age: 69.
Utility kind: 59% joint, 41% single.
Single candidates: ladies 592, males 423.
Common property worth: £319,809; preliminary LTV ≈ 19%.
Plan kind by case depend: 1,540 drawdown vs 946 lump sum.
Regardless of drawdown being extra frequent by depend, the typical drawdown facility dimension has fallen, indicating bigger preliminary attracts and smaller contingency services.
Rachel East, senior director of Later Life Recommendation at Key Fairness Launch, mentioned: “Owners look like taking a practical, two-part strategy: utilizing fairness launch first to safe necessities and ease rapid monetary pressure, whereas nonetheless setting apart modest sums for holidays, household items and different quality-of-life spending. It’s a shift from non-obligatory initiatives towards cautious prioritisation”.
