"This reaffirms the resilience of the market and shows that landlords will take advantage of a comparatively favourable borrowing environment to enhance their propositions, leveraging equity to make improvements to their properties"
- Louisa Sedgwick - Paragon Bank
Industry figures reveal a sharp annual rise in buy-to-let borrowing used for property improvements.
Data shows that in the first half of 2024, equity worth £712 million was used for property improvement across 4,632 remortgage cases. By the same period in 2025, almost £1.1 billion was raised for the same purpose across 6,737 remortgages. This represents a 54% increase in monetary terms and a 45% rise in the number of loans.
This is the highest level of remortgage-funded property improvement by landlords since the first half of 2022, when 8,032 remortgages released £1.28 billion in equity. In comparison, a year later, equity withdrawn dropped to £662 million across 4,605 remortgage cases. The mini-budget and the resulting surge in mortgage rates had forced many landlords to switch to products offered by their existing lenders to manage affordability.
Since then, the market has recovered, and both the value and volume of equity withdrawn for property improvements have steadily increased.
The figures align with research from Paragon’s Improving standards and sustainability in privately rented properties report, which shows landlords have driven substantial growth in the proportion of privately rented homes classed as decent. According to the report, 44% of landlords adopt a strategy of acquiring homes in need of improvement, while landlords spend around £8,500 a year across their portfolios on property upgrades.
“As we near the three-year anniversary of the mini-budget, we can look back at how it has influenced landlord behaviour in the time since. This data shows how it had a very real impact on the market, curtailing investment in improving privately rented homes,” said Louisa Sedgwick, managing director of mortgages at Paragon Bank.
“But it’s encouraging to see this recover over the past couple of years and approach the levels recorded before market turmoil. This reaffirms the resilience of the market and shows that landlords will take advantage of a comparatively favourable borrowing environment to enhance their propositions, leveraging equity to make improvements to their properties,” Sedgwick added.
