Two-thirds of under-30 homeowners have mortgage terms up to 40 years
Around two-thirds of homeowners under the age of 30 have a mortgage term between 30 and 40 years, analysis has found.
A study of over 190,000 by mortgage overpayment app Sprive found that more young adults were taking on longer mortgages, while just 6% of people aged 40-49 had mortgages up to 40 years.
Further, just 42% of homeowners aged 30-39 had mortgage terms of 30-40 years.
Sprive said that because of this, many younger homeowners did not expect to be mortgage-free until they are 59 years old.
Jinesh Vohra, CEO of Sprive, said: “Longer mortgage terms have become the price many younger buyers have to pay to get onto the property ladder. Spreading repayments over 30 or even 40 years can make monthly payments affordable, but it also means paying interest for much longer and staying in debt well into later life.
“The good news is that there are ways to cut the debt; making overpayments, even relatively small ones, can shave years off the mortgage and save tens of thousands of pounds in interest. Many people don’t realise how much difference regular overpayments can make.”
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Sprive said mortgage overpayments could help. With its average user having a mortgage of £202,000 on a rate of 4.14%, overpayments of just £50 per month could mean someone is mortgage-free nearly two years earlier and save them more than £10,700 in interest.
Increasing this to £100 per month could save over £19,700 in interest and shorten a mortgage term by more than three-and-a-half years.
Recent data from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) showed that in 2025, 72% of new mortgages sold were on terms longer than 20 years. The data showed that around a third of new mortgage transactions last year were on terms of 30 years or longer.
