Bridge facilities are designed to be temporary. The standard product runs 12 to 18 months, with development bridges running to 24. The active UK bridge book at any time should therefore be heavily skewed to charges under 18 months old.
It is not. In the current Companies House snapshot, 19,000 to 24,000 UK property holding companies carry at least one active bridge charge that has been registered for more than 18 months without satisfaction. That is roughly half of the entire active bridge book. The 24+ month overdue subset (the genuinely distressed end) is 11,000 to 15,000.
How a market builds a refinancing cliff
2022 and 2023 were the largest bridge origination years on record for the UK specialist market. Three macro factors drove it:
- Section 24 phasing finished its transition, accelerating individual-to-corporate landlord migration. Newly-incorporated SPVs took bridge against existing property as part of the transfer.
- The temporary SDLT changes through 2022 to 2024 pulled forward transaction volume; many of those transactions used bridge as the acquisition vehicle.
- Conventional BTL pricing tightened faster than borrowers could refinance, so bridges that should have been 12-month transitions ran 24 months.
The market expectation in 2022 was that bridge volume would unwind cleanly through 2024 to 2025 as borrowers exited onto term BTL or onto sale. In practice, BTL rates remained elevated, building-society BTL appetite tightened on portfolio borrowers, and a meaningful slice of the bridge book extended into 2025 and 2026.
What the 18+ month cohort splits into
Not all 19,000 to 24,000 are workable refinance prospects. The cohort splits roughly as follows:
| Sub-cohort | Share | Refinance probability |
|---|---|---|
| Clean overrun (asset sound, refinance is the right answer) | 40 to 45% | High |
| Restructured (extension already in place, lender is comfortable) | 20 to 25% | Medium |
| Workout (distress signals present, refinance is a stretch) | 15 to 20% | Low |
| Sale-bound (borrower exiting via sale rather than refinance) | 10 to 15% | Not a refinance prospect |
| Disputed / contested | 3 to 5% | Not a refinance prospect |
The clean overrun + restructured combined (60 to 70% of the cohort, roughly 11,000 to 17,000 companies) is the addressable refinance pool. The remainder are workout, sale-bound, or disputed and require different commercial treatment.
Regional pressure points
The 18+ month overdue cohort is geographically concentrated in patterns that mirror dissolution acceleration. Wales, the North West, and Yorkshire & Humber are over-indexed; Greater London and the home counties are under-indexed (higher equity cushion, easier refinance).
For a specialist refinance lender or a clean-bridge originator, the over-indexed regions are where pricing power is highest. The under-indexed regions are where volume is highest but margin is competed away.
Timing the conversation
The single most predictable thing about a bridge facility is its term expiry. The original lender will be having the extension conversation around month 11 or 12. A competitor lender approaching the borrower at month 11 with a take-out quote is ahead of the extension conversation rather than behind it. The 18+ month cohort is past that window; the 12 to 15 month bridge book (a further 8,000 to 11,000 companies) is the leading-edge opportunity.
In our portal, the 12-month, 15-month, 18-month, and 24-month thresholds are all exposed as filters. Lenders can configure outreach cadences against each band.
The refinancing cliff is a 2026-to-2027 phenomenon
The 2022 origination wave is now hitting its 36 to 48 month mark. The 2023 wave is hitting 24 to 36. Most of the genuinely-stuck book is in the 2022 to 2023 cohort. By late 2027, attrition (refinance, sale, dissolution) will have meaningfully reduced the addressable cohort. The 2026 to 2027 window is the peak. After that, the next refinance cliff is the 2024 to 2025 cohort which runs smaller and arrives 2028 to 2029.
England & Wales coverage. Loan size data is not in Companies House charge filings; lender pricing models must overlay.
Time your refinance outreach to the bridge term
GalimAI exposes 12, 15, 18, and 24-month charge-age filters so lenders can engage borrowers ahead of the extension conversation, not behind it.
Try the portal Book a callFAQ
Why 18 months as a threshold and not 12?
12 months is the original facility term for most products. 18 months captures clean overruns that are still resolvable through refinance; the 12 to 18 month band is the leading-edge prospect cohort that has not yet entered visible distress.
How does GalimAI distinguish clean overrun from workout?
By signal stacking. A clean overrun typically presents as charge over 18 months + no other distress signals (no late filings, no Gazette notice, no director age 65+, no multi-lender stack). A workout presents as charge over 18 months + two or more additional distress signals.
Is the refinancing cliff specific to 2026?
Peak years are 2026 to 2027 for the 2022 to 2023 origination wave. The cliff is a multi-year phenomenon but the largest addressable cohort is now.
Does the portal include 12 to 18 month leading-edge prospects?
Yes. Filter the charge age band to 12 to 18 months for the cohort that is about to hit term expiry but is not yet in extension.
Are extensions visible in the data?
Where the lender re-papers (discharge + new charge against the same title), yes. Where the lender simply extends without re-papering, the data shows continuous charge age and we infer extension from other signals.