High-net-worth borrowers with substantial assets but limited declared income are increasingly accessing competitive mortgage solutions through bespoke underwriting. This case study explores how a £2.5M mortgage was structured using asset strength rather than traditional affordability metrics.

I have been arranging mortgages for high-net-worth clients for nearly twenty years, and the question I get asked most often by accountants and wealth managers has not changed: my client has plenty of money but very little income. Can you get them a mortgage?

Twenty years ago, the honest answer was usually no, or not without a lot of grief. Today, the answer is yes, and not just yes, but yes at competitive pricing.

We recently arranged a £2.5m mortgage against a £4.25m residence for a client whose declared income would have flagged on every mainstream affordability calculator in the country. The loan was completed at 5.44 per cent over a three-year term, with a loan-to-value of just under 60 per cent. The decision factor was not the client's earnings. It was what the client owned.

This is the shift that has happened quietly in our segment over the last two years. The £2m-plus mortgage market has split in two. On one side sit the high-street brands and a handful of building societies, still anchored to income multiples and PAYE history. On the other sit the private banks, specialist lenders, and a small group of bespoke underwriters who price a deal off the whole balance sheet.

In this case, the client's property added a complication. Its characteristics fell outside what most prime residential lenders consider standard security. That ruled out half the market before we even started discussing affordability. The deal needed a lender who could take a view on the property and on the client.

There are three reasons this kind of deal now closes when five years ago it would not have.

The first is that the universe of lenders willing to underwrite manually has expanded. Private banks have always done bespoke credit, but they were not always interested in mortgage-only relationships. Several now are. A handful of specialist lenders have built propositions specifically for the asset-rich, income-light profile, and they price aggressively because they want the relationship.

The second is broker access. These lenders do not advertise. They do not appear on comparison sites. The relationship is the product. If you do not place a reasonable volume with them and present cases properly, the door does not open.

The third is client expectation. Five years ago, a client with the profile I have described would have accepted a refusal and moved on. Now they expect a yes. They have read enough about how private credit and asset-based lending work, and they push their advisers to push the brokers. That pressure has accelerated the market.

The result is a £2m-plus mortgage market that looks very different to the one regulators and trade press still tend to describe. The deals are larger, the underwriting more bespoke, and the relationship between broker and lender is materially more important than the headline product rate.

There is a warning embedded in all of this. The lenders who do these deals well are not the lenders who advertise widely, and the brokers who find them are not the brokers who run on volume. If a client with this profile walks into a high-street branch or a mass-market broker, the deal will not happen. They will be told no, and they will believe it.

The deal we closed this month is, in that sense, a small reminder. Asset cover is the test now. Income is supporting evidence. The good lenders know that. The brokers worth their fee know which lenders to call.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up with your mortgage repayments.

Read the full case study here: https://www.ennessglobal.com/insights/case-studies/innovative-financing-solution-high-value-property-limited-incom