London Development Exit Data: H1 2026
Across London, development loans are going on faster than they are being repaid, and the repayment ratio sits below the national figure. What the H1 2026 data means for your exit.
For every three development charges registered in London in the year to June 2026, roughly one was filed as repaid. The ratio was 0.33, the same as the year before, while across England and Wales it improved to 0.40. New lending kept growing, the capital's new-build price premium narrowed sharply, and exit-type lending to developers held level. Together they shape how a London developer should plan to leave a development loan.
This article covers the first half of 2026 across all 33 London authorities. The full London-wide development exit report carries the charts and the national comparison, and the borough-by-borough reports break the same data down locally.
A note on what is being counted
Most of the lending figures come from the Companies House charge register. A charge is a security document that a lender files against a company or its property. Counting charges tells us how many loans were secured and repaid, not their size. Repayments are also filed late, often weeks or months after a loan has cleared, so the most recent satisfaction figures are provisional and are expected to rise.
One repayment for every three new loans
Development lenders registered 2,057 charges in London in the 12 months to June 2026, up 13.2% on the 1,817 of the year before and slightly ahead of the national rise of 11.7%. They were spread across 1,219 borrowing companies. The first half of 2026 brought 1,052, against 917 a year earlier.
Repayments rose too, to 673 in the year from 597, an increase of 12.7%. Because new lending rose by a similar margin, the ratio of repayments to new charges stayed at 0.33. Nationally, repayments grew 21.1% and the ratio moved from 0.37 to 0.40. London is adding to its stock of live development loans faster than it is clearing them.
At 30 June 2026 London had 8,931 live development charges. 59.9% had been registered more than 24 months earlier and 68.5% more than 18 months earlier, close to the national 60.6% and 69.1%. Development facilities are commonly written for around 18 to 24 months, so a majority of the capital's live book is already beyond that range.
Loans that do repay are clearing a little faster
There is a better signal inside the repayment data. Development loans repaid in London in the year to June 2026 had been in place for a median of 25.1 months, down from 26.4 months the year before. The national median was 26.1 months.
The new-build premium has narrowed
Land Registry records new-build sales up to a year late, so we read them over the settled year of 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025. London recorded 5,172 new-build sales in that window, down 7.3% from 5,582, against a 6.1% fall nationally. New-build accounted for 5.7% of all London sales, compared with 8.3% across England and Wales.
The price picture changed more. New-build flats sold at a median of £568,700, against £440,000 for existing flats, a premium of 29.2%. In the settled year before, the median was £668,125 and the premium 53.6%. Nationally the new-build flat premium in the latest settled year was 57.9%. New-build houses in London sold at a median of £800,000 against £625,000 for existing houses, a premium of 28.0%, from 182 sales.
A narrower premium leaves an exit lender less headroom between development value and the resale market. Across all sales, London recorded 83,921 transactions in the 12 months to January 2026, down 0.2%.
Exit-type lending held level
Bridging lenders, specialist banks and private credit funds registered 835 charges against London development and construction companies in the year to June 2026, almost unchanged from 843, a fall of 0.9%. Nationally the same measure rose 3.4%. Specialist banks accounted for 424, bridging lenders 407 and private credit funds 4, down from 24. The first half of 2026 was a little firmer, with 421 charges against 401 a year earlier.
We also track exit refinance events: new charges registered on the same title after a specialist development lender's charge has been repaid or released. London recorded 10 in the year to June 2026, 8 of them refinances, up from 6 the year before.
Across all property-secured charges matched to a lender type, specialist lenders held 89.6% in London against 88.4% nationally. Bridging lenders held 31.8%, above the national 27.5%, with specialist banks on 57.4% and high-street banks on 10.4%.
Planning coverage and the largest approvals
Planning data is available for 22 of London's 33 authorities. Barking and Dagenham, Camden, Hackney, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Merton, Richmond upon Thames and Waltham Forest are not in the dataset, so the totals below understate the capital as a whole.
Across the covered councils, 6,978 residential applications were approved in their rolling windows between August 2025 and September 2026, with 3,067 pending. Units were stated on 1,591 approvals, totalling 7,858. The largest approved schemes in the data were 340 units at the Regina Road Estate, South Norwood, 320 units at 1 and 3 to 11 Wellfit Street, 7 to 9 Hinton Road and Hardess Street, SE24, 243 units at Skipton House, 80 London Road, SE1, 238 units at 26 to 52 Whytecliffe Road South and Purley Station Car Park, and 211 units on land to the rear of 13 to 73 Stafford Road, Croydon.
How we would approach a London exit
With repayments running at a third of new lending, the queue of schemes that will need an exit is growing. We would start the exit conversation well before a facility's end date, bring current resale evidence for your unit types rather than relying on the wider premium of the earlier settled year, and test both bridging lenders and specialist banks, which between them account for almost all exit-type lending to London developers. Our services page sets out the facilities we arrange for schemes at or near completion.
Each case is assessed on its own facts. The terms available depend on the scheme, the strength of its sales evidence and the developer, and no facility is guaranteed. We are a broker, not a lender. Development exit finance for companies is unregulated lending.
Data: Companies House charge register and company data, HM Land Registry Price Paid Data and planning records from 22 London councils, analysed by Construction Capital. Lenders are grouped by category and never named. Charge counts reflect loans secured and repaid, not loan values, and recent repayment figures are provisional.
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