The 30-year+ mortgage is becoming the new 25-year mortgage
By Claire Askham, Head of Mortgage Sales, Buckinghamshire Building Society
For generations of homebuyers, the 25-year mortgage was almost a given. You bought your first home, took out a mortgage over 25 years and, all being well, had it repaid comfortably before retirement.
For today's first-time buyers, that picture is changing rapidly
The latest English Housing Survey found that 62% of first-time buyers with a mortgage had taken a repayment term of 30 years or more in 2024/25. Just five years earlier, that figure stood at 47%.
It is a significant shift, and one that tells us something important about the changing first-time buyer market.
Longer mortgage terms can, of course, reduce monthly repayments and therefore help with affordability. At a time when buyers are balancing higher property prices with the wider cost of living, spreading borrowing over a longer period can make the difference between a mortgage being manageable or simply out of reach.
But perhaps we also need to change the way we think about the mortgage term itself.
A first-time buyer taking a 35-year mortgage today isn't necessarily making a decision that will remain unchanged for the next 35 years. Their first mortgage is a starting point.
Over that time, salaries may increase, careers will develop and circumstances will change. Borrowers may choose to make overpayments, reduce their mortgage term when they remortgage or move home several times before that original mortgage would ever have reached maturity.
That makes flexibility increasingly important
As an industry, our role shouldn't simply be to help someone afford their first mortgage on day one. We should also be thinking about whether the mortgage gives them options as their circumstances evolve.
There is another important change happening alongside longer terms. The average first-time buyer in England is now 34, compared with 32 in 2019/20. That means a 35-year term could potentially take a borrower close to, or even beyond, traditional retirement age.
None of this means longer mortgage terms are inherently a bad thing. For some borrowers, they can provide a valuable route into homeownership that might otherwise be unavailable.
But the move away from the traditional 25-year mortgage does mean we need to think differently about what a first mortgage represents.
Increasingly, it isn't a 25-year plan set in stone. It's the first stage of a financial journey that needs room to change along the way.