Development lending in Liverpool almost doubled in the year to June 2026, while the number of new-build homes reaching the Land Registry fell sharply. Those two lines are moving in opposite directions, and the gap between them is where exit risk builds up. If you are funding a Liverpool scheme now, it is worth understanding both.
We analysed Companies House charge filings and HM Land Registry sales for Liverpool to see how local schemes stand after the first half of 2026. The full dataset, including quarterly charts and a national comparison, is published in the Liverpool development exit report. This briefing pulls out what matters for developers.
A surge in new development facilities
Lenders registered 145 new development charges against Liverpool sites and developers in the 12 months to June 2026, against 76 in the previous year. That is an increase of 90.8%. Across England and Wales the rise was 11.7%. Among the 25 cities we track, only Southampton and Hull grew faster, and among the 42 locations with at least 50 new charges in the year, Liverpool ranks fifth.
The growth is broad rather than concentrated in a few large deals. The charges were taken by 72 separate borrowing companies, up from 51. The first half of 2026 alone produced 60 new charges, against 35 in the same months of 2025, and recent filings are provisional, so that figure is more likely to rise than fall.
Repayments are not keeping pace
Lenders filed 52 development charges as satisfied over the year, up from 38. That is progress, but it has not kept up with new lending. For every new development charge there were 0.36 repayments, below the national ratio of 0.40 and below Liverpool's own ratio of 0.50 a year earlier.
A charge is a security document, not a loan balance, and satisfactions are often filed late. Read with those cautions, the ratio still says the local development book is growing faster than it is clearing.
How old is the live book?
At 30 June 2026 there were 601 development charges still live in Liverpool. Of those, 65.6% had been registered more than 24 months earlier, five points above the national figure of 60.6%. Including everything older than 18 months, the share was 71.5%.
There is one encouraging sign. Loans repaid in the latest year had been in place for a median of 29.6 months, down from 40.5 months the year before. Schemes that do complete are clearing faster than they were, even if the backlog of older facilities remains larger than average.
Exit lending is growing fast, and it is mostly bridging
Development exit and refinance charges against Liverpool borrowers rose to 82 in the year, from 50, an increase of 64%. Nationally exit lending grew by 3.4%. Of the 33 locations with at least 30 exit charges in the year, only Newcastle and Stoke-on-Trent grew faster.
The mix matters. Of those 82 exit charges, 59 came from bridging lenders and 23 from specialist banks. Bridging money is quick and flexible, but it is usually more expensive than a term refinance. A Liverpool developer refinancing out of a development loan today is likely to be pricing against a bridging-heavy market.
The same pattern shows across all property-secured lending in the city. Specialist lenders accounted for 95.1% of matched charges over the year, the second highest share of any location we track, against 88.4% nationally. Bridging lenders alone took 36.6%, and high street lenders just 4.9%.
New-build sales have dropped away
Land Registry records new-build sales slowly, so we read them over the latest settled year, August 2024 to July 2025. Liverpool recorded 188 new-build sales in that window, against 774 in the year before, a fall of 75.7%. Only Islington saw a steeper fall among the locations we track. New-build made up 3.7% of all Liverpool sales, against 8.3% nationally.
Prices held up better than volumes. New-build flats sold at a median of £197,472, 39.1% above the £142,000 median for existing flats. New-build houses sold at a median of £203,995, 7.4% above existing houses at £190,000.
The combination is the risk to watch. More development loans are being written, while far fewer completed homes are selling through the Land Registry. Some of that gap is timing, because schemes funded in 2025 and 2026 have not completed yet. But it means many Liverpool schemes will reach completion together, competing for the same buyers and the same exit lenders.
New companies keep forming
Liverpool saw 574 new property SPVs incorporated in the year, up 4.9% on the 547 before. Of those, 233 were registered as development companies. New vehicles are still being set up to buy and build, which supports the view that the pipeline of local schemes will stay busy.
What to take from it
Liverpool is one of the fastest-growing development lending markets we track, with a fast-growing exit market that leans heavily on bridging. If you are approaching completion, plan the exit early, test a development exit facility against a straight sale, and budget for bridging-style pricing if the sales period runs long. If your scheme is student-led, our Liverpool student accommodation report covers that market separately.
Sources: Companies House charge register and HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, analysed by Construction Capital. Figures for 2026 are provisional. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.