No deposit mortgage deals are attracting a new generation of buyers who cannot save fast enough to keep pace with rising house prices, and the numbers suggest the trend is accelerating well beyond a niche quirk. According to the Bank of England, the share of UK mortgages with deposits worth less than 10% of the property’s value is at its highest since 2008. The average first-time buyer is still putting down around 20%, but the pull of the lower end is growing fast.
Conroy, 32, and his partner Amber, 28, bought a four-bedroom home in Swinton for £242,000 in August using Skipton Building Society’s Track Record mortgage, a product that lends 100% of a property’s value with nothing upfront. Their rate is 5.33% fixed for five years, with monthly repayments of £1,500, roughly what they were paying to rent in central Manchester. ‘I don’t think it’s dawned on us it’s really ours,’ says Conroy, a video editor.
Why No Deposit Mortgage Deals Are Growing Again
Skipton launched the Track Record mortgage on 9 May 2023. To qualify, applicants must be aged 21 or over, must not have owned a home in the UK in the last three years, and must show proof of 12 consecutive months of rent paid within the last 18 months. The maximum loan-to-income ratio is 4.49, and properties must be valued at no more than £600,000. Under Skipton’s intermediary criteria, monthly mortgage payments can be offered at up to 150% of the applicant’s mean average monthly rental payment over the prior six months. Skipton has also launched a 100% Track Record mortgage for shared ownership, currently offered as a five-year fix at 5.70%.
Lloyds Bank has moved into similar territory. Its £5,000 deposit mortgage, announced on 12 May 2026 and open to applications from 18 May, carries no product fee, a maximum loan-to-income ratio of 4.5 times, and a maximum term of 40 years. According to the Lloyds Bank newsroom, the bank aims to provide an additional £500 million of lending to first-time buyers over the next year through the product. Lloyds excludes new-build properties, shared ownership, and gifted deposits.
Bronya, 27, and her partner George, 29, used a Lloyds mortgage to buy a four-bedroom house in Rhuddlan, North Wales in August. Lloyds lent them £258,000, roughly 98% of the property’s value, over a 33-year term with a £5,000 deposit and a rate of 5.89% fixed for five years, equating to monthly repayments of £1,400. That is about what they paid to rent a one-bed flat. They kept their savings for a renovation costing upwards of £20,000, believing the refurbishment will lift the home’s value. ‘We also plan to stay here our whole lives,’ says George.
The broader market context explains why lenders are pushing these products. According to the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association, gross mortgage lending rose to £288 billion in 2025, up 19% on 2024, with lending for house purchase 18% higher at £184 billion. The Financial Conduct Authority‘s September 2026 mortgage lending statistics show gross advances hit £77.4 billion in the latest quarter, up 11.1% from the prior quarter and 31.7% higher than a year earlier.
Widespread uptake of high-LTV loans by borrowers who could not afford them was central to the 2008 financial crisis. Today’s versions carry stronger safeguards: Skipton requires proof of consecutive rent payments and caps borrowing at under 4.5 times income, while Lloyds runs the same income test before issuing a pound. David Hollingworth, associate director at brokers L&C Mortgages, says lenders are recognising that some people have ‘good affordability but may be struggling to save for a deposit while paying a rent and dealing with cost of living pressures’.
The Risks Are Real, Even With Stronger Checks
The most acute risk is negative equity: when a borrower owns minimal equity from the start, even a modest fall in house prices can leave them owing more than the property is worth. Bank of England data for Q4 2025 show the proportion of new lending going to borrowers with a high loan-to-income ratio increased by 1.7 percentage points from the previous quarter to 46.5%, the highest since Q4 2022. According to the Office for National Statistics, the median loan-to-value ratio for first-time buyer mortgage sales reached approximately 85.3% in 2025, with the first-time buyer loan-to-income ratio rising from 3.6 in 2024 to 3.7 in 2025 for England.
Rate levels compound the pressure. Financial information service Moneyfacts recorded the average five-year fixed residential mortgage rate at 5.87% as of 17 September 2026, its highest since November 2023. The Bank of England held its base rate at 3.75% at its September 2026 meeting, having cut from a peak of 5.25% in August 2023. Rates are lower than that peak, but the five-year fixes that most low-deposit borrowers use are not following the base rate down at pace.
Hollingworth urges borrowers to keep their eyes open: ‘Think carefully: what do monthly payments look like? Are you aware that interest rates could go up?’
Conroy plans to overpay his mortgage through the initial five-year fixed term to build equity. ‘There is always the element of a gamble with the property market,’ he says. ‘But I have researched the area we moved to and don’t think house prices are going to drop.’
That is the bet at the heart of every no deposit mortgage deal. Whether house prices cooperate is the one variable no eligibility checklist, however robust, can screen for.
