Nine billion is a really, really big number. It’s not the UK's housing deficit. It's not the infrastructure funding gap. It's not even a government budget line. It's the amount of developer contributions, which is essentially money paid by housebuilders as a direct condition of planning permission, currently sitting unspent in local authority accounts across England and Wales. Nine billion pounds, earmarked for schools, roads, affordable housing, healthcare and community infrastructure, that’s been collected, banked, and that’s it. This isn't speculation, it's the findings of the Home Builders Federation's most recent Freedom of Information exercise, published in March 2026, based on responses from 243 local authorities. The figure has risen 9%, around £800 million, since mid-2024 alone. As our sector battles to get shovel-ready developments moving, in this week's blog, we ask ourselves, what’s going on?

Developer contributions come in two main forms, and the ones we tend to see primarily are Section 106 agreements. In layperson's terms, these are site-specific obligations negotiated during the planning process and vary depending on the project's size. So, for instance, a developer building 200 homes might contribute to a new school, a GP surgery, or an off-site affordable housing fund. The other instance considered in the cashflow assessment is the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). This is essentially a standardised charge per square metre of new development, designed to pool resources for wider strategic infrastructure.
Of the £9 billion sitting unspent, £6.6 billion is Section 106 money and £2.2 billion is CIL. The average council holds £19 million in unspent S106 contributions, though the average is distorted by a small number of extreme cases. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets, for instance, holds over £260 million in unspent contributions. Nine times the national average, on a per-household basis. More troubling than the total is the age profile. Around £3 billion of those funds has been held for more than five years despite many agreements explicitly requiring deployment within that window. Some councils have acknowledged holding money for over two decades. Contributions paid in connection with developments that have long since been completed, occupied, and forgotten.

To put these numbers into context: £2 billion is sitting unspent in education contributions, a figure equivalent to the entire annual Department for Education budget for school rebuilding, maintenance and repair. To put things into perspective, that same sum could fund 126,000 new school places. Meanwhile, £700 million earmarked specifically for affordable housing remains undeployed, at a time when housing affordability sits at historic lows across much of the country. The HBF found that £320 million in healthcare contributions is unspent, including £128 million already handed over to NHS Integrated Care Boards, who, in some instances, have been refused or simply ignored when requesting access to their own earmarked funds.

These aren't abstract line items. They represent real infrastructure that real communities were promised in exchange for accepting new development on their doorstep. The deal was: you get the houses, we get the schools, the roads, the doctors' surgeries. That deal is not being honoured, and the situation is tipping from frustrating into genuinely counterproductive. One of the most common grounds for local authority objection to new development applications is infrastructure pressure, the argument that local schools are full, roads are at capacity, and GP lists are closed. Those objections, in many cases, are being made by the same councils sitting on hundreds of millions of pounds specifically intended to address infrastructure pressure. The HBF has explicitly called for existing unspent contributions to be factored into planning decisions. If a council holds a £30 million unspent education fund, the argument that a new development would overload local schools becomes considerably harder to sustain.

The other major concern the report raises is that transparency could well be heading in the wrong direction. Councils are legally required to publish annual Infrastructure Funding Statements detailing how contributions will be spent. In 2020, 90% met the statutory deadline. By 2025, that figure had dropped to 75%. The HBF attributes this to chronic understaffing and limited capacity, but the effect is that communities have less visibility into the money raised specifically on their behalf.

So what’s the lesson in this?

We operate in the space where capital meets shovel-ready residential development, and the SME housebuilders we work with are, in many cases, doing exactly what the country needs them to do: bringing forward housing on sites with planning and funding in place and ready to build. Capital only creates value when it moves, and this is a principle of our sector. Development finance that sits in a bank account, however well-intentioned, doesn't build a single home, fund a single school place, or improve a single road junction. It's the deployment of funds, structured correctly, drawn down against verified progress, secured against real assets that turns financial commitment into physical outcomes. Our loans are structured around exactly that principle. Staged drawdowns tied to independently verified build milestones.

The £9 billion sitting in council accounts isn't a story about bad people, and it’s important to remember that. It's a story about what happens when systems aren't designed for deployment, when the incentives, capacity, and accountability structures that turn collected funds into completed infrastructure simply aren't there.

For investors and borrowers who want their capital working in the real economy, that's a cautionary tale worth taking seriously.

Invest & Fund has returned over £370 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

The ONS published the March 2026 Private Rent and House Prices bulletin last week. Somewhere, a statistician hit send and went to make a cup of tea, blissfully unaware that they had just produced the most compelling argument for development finance since someone first noticed that people need somewhere to live. For development finance brokers, this bulletin is required reading. For everyone else, it is the kind of document that makes excellent bedtime material, assuming you want to fall asleep feeling vaguely anxious about property! In this week's blog, we take a deeper dive into what it means.

UK house price growth came in at 1.3% annually to January 2026, down from 1.9% the previous month. Cue the journalists. Cue the podcasts. The report uncovers regional disparities because that is what the regional breakdown actually shows. The North West grew at 3.1%. The West Midlands and East Midlands were close behind. Wales was up 2.0%. These are not the numbers of a market losing its nerve. These are the numbers of a market where demand is cheerfully ignoring every think piece written about it and continuing to outrun supply across a substantial portion of the country.

London, predictably, is doing London things. Prices in the capital fell 1.7% over the same period, marking the sixth consecutive month of annual decline, a trend London has now committed to with the energy of someone who has decided their personality is contrarian. This is not evidence that the city no longer needs homes; if anything, London needs homes desperately. It is perhaps evidence that affordability has hit a wall, that stamp duty is doing nobody any favours, and that anyone appraising a London development scheme on the basis of wishful thinking and a confident font choice is going to have a difficult conversation with their funder. Brokers placing London deals need lenders who genuinely understand the nuance, not just lenders whose website mentions London somewhere near the bottom of a regional list.

Average UK monthly private rents reached £1,374 in February 2026, up 3.5% year-on-year. Some commentators have noted that rent inflation is slowing from its 2023 peak and concluded that the rental market is normalising. These people are, with respect, consistently missing the point. Rents are not falling. They have never fallen. They have simply graduated from "scandalous" to "merely very high", and apparently that passes for good news now. The cumulative effect of several years of double-digit rent inflation in major cities has permanently altered what renters can afford, what they expect, and how long they will remain renters rather than buyers. The answer to that last one, increasingly, is: quite a long time.

In the North East, annual rent inflation remained at 7.6% and in Wales, 5.5%. These are not the figures of a market approaching equilibrium. These are the figures of a market that has been short of rental homes for so long that it has simply accepted the situation as a personality trait, much like London and its house price decline, though rather less voluntarily. For brokers we work with, the rental data is not background noise; it is ammunition. A developer building homes in a market where rental demand is this persistent benefits from a structural floor under end values. Buyers who cannot stretch to a mortgage remain renters. Renters create demand for rental stock. Rental stock requires investors. Investors require viable yields. Viable yields ultimately require that someone build the homes. That someone needs funding. And that funding needs a broker who has done their homework.

Peeling back the monthly revisions and the provisional estimates, the ONS bulletin delivers the same verdict it has been delivering with metronomic regularity for the better part of a decade: the UK is not building enough homes. Not by a modest margin. Not by a rounding error. By a figure that, if it were a hole in the ground, planners would probably spend four years debating whether it needed an environmental impact assessment before anyone filled it in. Rents are rising because there is insufficient stock. Prices are holding across most regions despite mortgage rates that would have caused widespread panic five years ago, because demand from buyers continues to exceed supply with the kind of stubborn persistence that would be admirable in any other context.

Into this breach step SME housebuilders, our clients and your clients. They are the developers actually building homes in the places where the data says homes are needed. They are also, historically, the developers most likely to be told by a major bank that their application will be reviewed in six to eight weeks, at which point nothing will happen. Our partnership with Homes England exists because specialist lenders and government alike have recognised what the data has been screaming for years: SME developers are critical to housing delivery and chronically underfinanced by the mainstream market.

That gap in the market is your opportunity. Mind it accordingly.

The ONS bulletin is not a document to skim-read and discard, however tempting that may be. Regional price growth, rent inflation by area, six consecutive months of London declines that somehow coexist with a national undersupply crisis, these are the building blocks of a credit narrative that makes a well-located, well-structured development scheme look exactly like what it is: a rational response to an irrational shortage. Our team underwrites with this market in mind; we are not lending against a frozen moment in time; we are lending against a UK housing landscape that has been demonstrably short of homes for years and shows absolutely no sign of accidentally building its way out of the problem. A submission that is grounded in this data, that names the market conditions, evidences the demand, and addresses the risks directly rather than burying them in optimistic footnotes, is a submission worth reading.

The ONS will be back in April with another bulletin, and we can tell you now that it will broadly say the same things. Rents up. Supply short. Demand persists & issues in London. The brokers who are using this data today are the ones with the busiest Q2. The ones waiting for a more convenient moment may wish to consult the rent inflation figures and reflect on the cost of delay.

Invest & Fund has returned over £370 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

For most of the past two years, UK government bonds looked like they were finding their footing. Yields had retreated from the January 2025 spike, inflation appeared to be easing, and markets were pricing in two Bank of England rate cuts for 2026. For investors who had endured the volatility of the post-pandemic period, gilts were once again looking like a reliable destination. In this week's blog, we consider that the picture has changed dramatically in the past three weeks.

At the point of writing, the UK government borrowing costs have surged to their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, with the benchmark 10-year gilt crossing 5% as investors scrambled to price in rising inflation risks and a growing probability of interest rate hikes. Yields on the 10-year gilt have jumped around 68 basis points in the 15 trading days since the US-Iran war began, while the yield on the 2-year gilt has added around 97 basis points. The rate cut that markets had considered a near-certainty for March has been shelved. The question now is not when rates fall next, but whether they might need to rise, which was unthinkable a mere month ago. For investors sitting in or considering gilts, this is not comfortable reading. And it raises a question that was already worth asking before this latest shock: is the assumed safety of government bonds actually safe at all, and what are the alternatives?

The Iran conflict was the immediate trigger, but the vulnerabilities it has exposed in the gilt market are structural, not situational. The repricing of UK sovereign debt reflects broader dynamics: elevated gilt yields influence mortgage rates, corporate borrowing costs, and investment decisions across the economy, and the episode underscores the sensitivity of sovereign debt markets to geopolitical development. Sadly, the UK entered this crisis in a particularly exposed position. Even before the conflict, the UK had the highest government borrowing costs of any G7 nation, with long-term 20 and 30-year gilts already trading above the 5% threshold. The government's fiscal headroom, the buffer Rachel Reeves had carefully constructed against her own fiscal rules, has been eroding in real time. Bloomberg economists calculated that market moves since the conflict began have already erased around £3 billion of the Chancellor's fiscal cushion, out of a total headroom of £23.6 billion estimated by the OBR at the start of March.

The deeper issue is that the UK's public finances offer limited room for error. The government's borrowing plans include £138 billion in 2025/26, with meaningful fiscal consolidation not expected until 2029-30. This backloaded approach risks eroding market confidence, particularly given persistent risks from climate-related costs, pension system pressures, and weak economic growth. Gilt investors are therefore not simply taking a view on short-term interest rates. They are taking a view on UK fiscal credibility over a decade or more, in a global environment that has just become significantly more volatile.

There is an argument that higher gilt yields are simply an opportunity, more income for less price. And it is not entirely wrong. From an investment perspective, higher yields are starting to restore value in parts of the curve. However, the corollary is equally true: investors who bought gilts in early 2026 on expectations of rate cuts and falling yields have already suffered meaningful capital losses. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions, and the move in the short end alone, nearly 100 basis points in a matter of weeks, has been painful. The 2022 gilt crisis offered a vivid illustration of how quickly that dynamic can turn severe. Triggered by a single ill-judged budget statement, it required the Bank of England's active intervention to prevent a cascade of forced selling by pension funds. While regulatory changes since then have increased resilience, the underlying vulnerability, a sovereign bond market dependent on market confidence in fiscal sustainability, remains. Volatility is, in essence, the price of owning gilts. When that volatility is driven by factors entirely outside an investor's control, a geopolitical shock, a fiscal misstep, a shift in global capital flows, the question of whether the yield justifies the risk becomes genuinely live.

Against this backdrop, the characteristics of direct lending to property developers look considerably more attractive than they might in calmer markets. At Invest&Fund, investors earn a fixed return over a defined term, secured against a first charge on UK residential property. The return is not a function of market sentiment, interest rate expectations, or sovereign creditworthiness. It is a contractual entitlement, backed by a tangible asset. The distinction matters. When gilt yields move 68 basis points in three weeks, existing holders suffer a capital loss. When a property development loan performs as contracted, investors receive precisely what they were promised. The two products inhabit different risk universes, and it is worth noting that direct lending carries its own risks, including borrower default and property-market exposure. But the risk profile is fundamentally different: it is project-specific and asset-backed, rather than macro-dependent and mark-to-market.

For investors who have found themselves sitting in gilts partly by default, attracted by the familiarity of government bonds rather than by active conviction, the current environment is a reasonable moment to examine whether that allocation is genuinely working. A 10-year gilt yielding just over 5% in an environment where UK inflation is expected to breach 5% this year means a real return close to zero, with meaningful capital risk on the downside if yields move higher still. Against that, a fixed, asset-backed return from direct lending held in an IFISA wrapper that shelters all income from tax looks like a different proposition entirely.

One of the least-discussed virtues of direct lending as an asset class is its relative imperviousness to the kind of market noise that has dominated headlines in recent weeks. The value of an Invest&Fund loan is not updated on a Bloomberg terminal every second. It does not respond to geopolitical events in the Strait of Hormuz, or to a speech by the Chancellor, or to revised OBR growth forecasts. It responds to one thing: whether the underlying development project is progressing and whether the borrower is performing.

That simplicity is not naivety; rigorous due diligence, conservative loan-to-value ratios, and first-charge security are the foundations of the asset class. But it does mean that investors can assess their position in terms they can understand and control, rather than watching a yield curve driven by events in the Middle East. Let's pepper these statements with some honesty, nobody is suggesting that gilts have no place in a portfolio, or that the current crisis will necessarily deepen. Some fund managers argue that if oil prices stabilise, bond yields could fall back and the Bank of England may be able to look through the inflationary spike. That may prove correct, but the volatility of the past three weeks is itself the argument.

In an environment of elevated geopolitical risk, precarious public finances, and genuine uncertainty about the future path of inflation and rates, the case for holding at least a portion of a fixed-income allocation in something genuinely uncorrelated, something asset-backed, contractual, and tax-sheltered, is worth making seriously.

That is exactly what Invest&Fund offers.

Invest & Fund has returned over £370 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

We kick off our new 'Field Experts' series with a conversation that goes straight to the heart of smart investing.

Hannah Davies, Head of Private Client and Alan Fletcher, Partnership Director at Invest&Fund, sit down with our guest Russell Dickie CTA, founder of RJD Tax Advice, a specialist tax advisory practice with roots in some of the UK's most respected firms, including Grant Thornton, Deloitte and Evelyn Partners.

The result is a candid, wide-ranging discussion covering everything from common investment mistakes and the quiet power of the Innovative Finance ISA to housing policy, patient capital, and the increasingly creative ways families are planning around rising school fees.

Grab a coffee, and download the inaugural edition of 'Field Experts' by clicking on the arrow above!

Invest & Fund operates a lending platform that brings together borrowers and lenders to finance residential property development projects. Lenders' capital is at risk, and payments are not guaranteed if the borrower defaults. Whilst Invest & Fund offers a Resale Marketplace, lenders may not always be able to access their money quickly. Lending via the platform is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Invest and Fund Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 711378). Invest, and Fund Limited (No. 8277803) is registered in England and Wales.

The information is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, or a recommendation. The value of investments can fall as well as rise, and you may not get back the amount originally invested. Please consult an independent financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

When the Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) launched in April 2016, it marked a subtle but significant shift in the UK’s financial landscape. For the first time, everyday investors could place loans and alternative finance investments inside the same tax-free wrapper that had long been reserved for cash savings and stock market portfolios. On paper, it looked like a technical policy change. In reality, the IFISA reflected a much bigger story, a British story, about fintech innovation, the changing shape of our investment culture, and a desire to channel private capital into real-world businesses. To understand the IFISA properly, it helps to go back to the environment in which it was born. In this week's blog, we will.

The IFISA emerged during a period when Britain was redefining itself economically and culturally. The UK fintech sector was exploding, and London had become one of the world’s leading financial technology hubs, with startups building digital platforms to challenge traditional banking models. New companies were asking a simple question: why should banks sit in the middle of every financial transaction? At the same time, culturally, the country was in a moment of transition greater than we could realise at the time. The debate that would eventually lead to the Brexit referendum was intensifying, the City of London was balancing its historic role in global finance with a new generation of digital disruptors, and British entrepreneurship was gaining renewed attention.

Born in the 2015 Budget, when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the creation of a new ISA category: the Innovative Finance ISA, the concept was simple but powerful. If investors were willing to lend their money directly to businesses and borrowers through regulated platforms, why shouldn’t they enjoy the same tax benefits as those investing in shares or cash savings? From April 2016, investors began allocating their annual ISA allowance to platform loans and certain debt-based investments, and the Interest earned within the IFISA would be completely tax-free. In effect, this was a watershed moment, as the government of the time acknowledged that finance had evolved and that the ISA system needed to evolve with it.

Of course, no change in financial markets happens without a little resistance, especially in the City of London. For decades, two major ISA products had dominated the market: Cash ISAs and Stocks & Shares ISAs. Entire industries had grown around selling them. Advisers built portfolios around them. Investment platforms marketed them relentlessly. Then along came the IFISA, a new competitor promising potentially attractive yields while funding real-economy lending. If you listened carefully in the early days of the IFISA, you could almost hear the collective sigh from parts of the traditional investment industry. After all, if investors started putting money into this product, that was money not flowing into the usual stock funds and financial products. One might say the IFISA was greeted in certain corners of the city with roughly the same enthusiasm as a new independent café opening next door to a chain coffee shop. Competition, after all, has a way of sharpening the mood.

One of the most compelling aspects of the IFISA is its ability to connect investors with tangible economic outcomes. Traditional financial markets can sometimes feel distant from the everyday economy; a share in a multinational corporation might be held through several layers of funds and platforms before an investor even knows they own it. However, with IFISA investments, the connection is clearer; if your capital helps finance a housing development, there is something distinctly British about the idea that this sector tapped into: investors backing businesses that are building things, creating jobs, and contributing to the national economy. It echoes an older tradition of investment, one before complex derivatives and the gamification of markets, where capital and enterprise were closely linked. It’s the paradox of our sector once again: we are both old-fashioned and hi-tech in the same breath, old-world principles packaged in a new-world wrapper.

So, what happened next? Nearly a decade after its introduction, the IFISA has become a recognised part of the ISA landscape, sitting alongside Cash ISAs and Stocks & Shares ISAs as a third option for tax-efficient investing. For many investors, it offers something different: the opportunity to earn returns through lending rather than equity ownership, while still benefiting from the ISA’s tax advantages. The sector has also matured significantly, with regulation strengthened, investor protections improved, and platforms developing more sophisticated risk management processes. As a result, IFISAs are increasingly viewed not as a novelty, but as a legitimate component of a diversified investment strategy.  That coffee shop got really big and sold a lot of lattes, so many that it became a whole chain of its own.  If the story of the IFISA so far reflects the rise of fintech, its future will likely be shaped by the continued evolution of digital finance.

We believe that technology will continue to improve investment platforms. Better data analytics and automated risk modelling may make alternative lending more transparent and accessible. We also believe investor demand for diversification is unlikely to disappear. In uncertain markets, many investors seek assets that behave differently from traditional equities. Finally, we believe there is growing recognition of the importance of directing capital into productive economic activity, particularly into smaller businesses that form the backbone of the British economy. In that sense, the IFISA represents something more than just another financial product. It reflects a broader shift in how people think about investing. The introduction of the IFISA did not dominate headlines in the way major political or economic events often do. Yet in its own quiet way, it represented a small revolution. It acknowledged that finance was changing. It embraced innovation emerging from Britain’s fintech sector. And it gave investors a new way to support businesses while benefiting from tax-efficient returns.

Not bad for an idea that some critics initially dismissed as a niche experiment.

Sometimes the most interesting financial innovations are those that start small and steadily reshape the landscape. And if the IFISA continues to grow alongside the fintech ecosystem that inspired it, its most important chapters may still be ahead.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

When the Office for National Statistics published its latest private rent and house prices bulletin in February 2026, it was a good chance to look back on some of our predictions from last year in relation to the rent spiral. Maybe it would have been a fairer assessment to call this piece “the end is not nigh,” as, with the benefit of hindsight and some calmer waters, our take on ‘build now or regret later’ may have seemed a tad alarmist. You could even argue that the new ONS numbers look almost reassuring. Average UK rents rose by 3.5% in the year to January 2026, down from 4.0% the month before, and the slowest rate of growth since March 2022. Property commentators have been quick to declare that the rental boom is cooling...but we feel the slowdown in rent growth is not the real story. The story is where rents already are, how they got there, and what happens to the country if supply does not keep pace with a demand that has not gone away. The ONS data is not a reason for relief. It is a warning, and it actually makes one of the most urgent cases yet for building more homes.

Starting with the headline figure, the average UK monthly private rents have reached £1,367, up 3.5% in the twelve months to January 2026. That is a new record. The growth rate may be slowing, but the absolute level keeps climbing, and rents have never been higher. For millions of tenants across the country, the news that the rate of increase is softening offers precisely zero relief from bills they are already struggling to pay. Looking beneath the national average and the regional picture becomes more acute. In the North East, for instance, private rent inflation hit 8.0% in the twelve months to January 2026, the highest of any English region. This is the part of the country where average wages are lowest, where households have the least financial cushion, and where an 8% rent increase lands hardest. In Wales, average rents rose by 5.8%, a financial reality confronting millions of people outside the London bubble that so much housing commentary focuses on.

London tells its own story as it always does. Annual rent inflation in London was just 1.1%, the lowest in England, yet the average rent in the capital stands at an eye-watering and unsustainable £2,253 per month. The slowdown is not evidence of affordability; it is evidence of a ceiling. Rents in London have hit the outer limit of what the market can bear, and Tenants simply cannot pay more. That is not a healthy equilibrium; it is a pressure valve at maximum capacity before demand destruction. To understand why the ONS data should alarm policymakers, investors, and anyone involved in housing, you need to understand what these numbers mean in practice for real households.

Financial advisers and letting agents alike apply the 30% rule: the generally accepted standard that housing costs should consume no more than 30% of gross income. Households with 40% or more are considered to be in financial stress. Beyond that, they begin making impossible choices between rent and food, between rent and energy, between rent and saving anything at all for the future. The average UK renter paid £10,580 in rent during 2025, consuming 41% of their take-home pay, up sharply from 36% the previous year. The country, as a whole, has already crossed the affordability threshold. And the situation is considerably worse in specific geographies. Every single London borough has breached the 40% affordability line. In twelve London boroughs, tenants spent more than half of their annual earnings on rent in 2025. A year ago, only three boroughs had crossed that 50% threshold.

This is not a London problem that provincial England can observe at a comfortable distance. Manchester has now entered the top ten least affordable cities in the UK. Brighton sees tenants spending 47% of their income on rent. The affordability crisis is spreading outward from the capital at a pace, mirroring the pattern of renters being pushed further from expensive city centres in search of affordable rents. And as they move, they bid up rents in areas that were previously manageable, compressing affordability across an ever-wider geography. More than half of UK renters, 56% to be exact, are staying put in their current properties despite wanting to move, with almost three quarters citing housing costs as the reason. This market has seized up. Mobility has collapsed. People cannot move closer to work, cannot upsize for growing families, and cannot downsize when circumstances change. The economic and social consequences of a locked rental market ripple far beyond housing. Labour mobility, productivity, family formation, and mental health are all downstream of the ability to find a home you can afford.

The slowdown in rent growth recorded by the ONS is, paradoxically, one of the most worrying signals in the report. It is not a sign of supply catching up with demand. Zoopla's analysis, which included data from the wider data, confirms that the number of rented homes is broadly unchanged over the past decade, with little prospect of near-term growth. The slowdown is a sign that the market has reached the edge of what tenants can physically pay. The ceiling has been found, not because the supply problem has been solved, but because households have run out of financial road. History and economics are clear about what follows when essential housing costs become unaffordable at mass scale. The consequences are not abstract; they are already measurable. One-third of men and 22% of women aged 20 to 34 now live with their parents, a figure that has grown by nearly 10% over the past decade. Young people are not entering the rental market because they cannot afford to. They are staying in parental homes, deferring independence, delaying family formation, and suppressing a wave of housing demand that will not disappear; it is simply accumulating.

When concealed households do eventually enter the market, as life events force them to, they will do so into a rental stock that has not grown to accommodate them. The pressure release, when it comes, will not be gentle. Landlord exits from the sector, driven by tax changes, the Renters' Rights Act, and the regulatory complexity of the private rented sector, are already reducing available stock in many areas. Average UK rents have risen by 34% over the past 4 years, since the pandemic. If the structural supply deficit is not addressed, and demand returns to the market in force as it inevitably will, the next leg of rent increases could make the post-pandemic surge look restrained. The economic consequences of mass unaffordability go further still. Housing costs that consume 40% or 50% of income are not only a personal financial crisis for the individuals involved but also a significant drag on consumer spending, savings rates, and economic activity more broadly. A workforce that cannot afford to live near its employment is less productive. A generation that cannot save for a deposit is a generation locked out of wealth accumulation. The housing crisis is simultaneously a productivity crisis, a generational equity crisis, and a fiscal crisis: as the state picks up ever more of the tab for housing benefits for private-sector renters priced out of anything else.

Every home built is rent relief. Every site funded, every scheme completed, every small housebuilder given the capital to get on site is a direct intervention in a market that is failing the people who depend on it most. The data has never made the case more clearly.

The question is whether the industry will respond at the pace and scale demanded.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

In this week's blog, we have a closer look at the Private Credit market, one in which direct lending alternatives like our sector sit comparatively close to, but from a slightly less affluent house. This is a neighbour with a trillion-dollar smile, with a very expensive car in the drive, a perfect garden, and quite a nice extension. For the better part of a decade, private credit was Wall Street's golden child. Institutional investors, pension funds, and increasingly retail investors poured capital into private credit funds, drawn by promises of high yields, steady returns, and a welcome escape from volatile public markets. As recently as 2024 and 2025, these funds were all the rage, swelling to an estimated $3.4 trillion globally. But heading into 2026, the cracks are beginning to show, and in this week's blog, we focus on diversification, transparency, and other ways to access returns from lending.

The initial alarms went off back in September 2025, when auto-parts maker First Brands Group collapsed under the weight of its heavily leveraged debt load. It wasn't an isolated incident. Fellow auto-industry firm Tricolor also went under around the same time, sending shockwaves through the private credit community and prompting JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to issue a now-famous warning: "When you see one cockroach, there are probably more." Billionaire bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach went further, accusing private lenders of making "garbage loans" and predicting that the next financial crisis will originate in private credit. Bank of America's equity strategy team flagged what they called "cockroaches in private lending" and warned of bad loan vintages coming due in 2026. These weren't merely rhetorical alarm bells. They reflected a genuine deterioration in underwriting standards driven by years of intense competition for deal flow. With too much capital chasing too few high-quality borrowers, managers loosened covenants, accepted higher leverage, and pushed into riskier market segments, all in the name of deploying capital and meeting return targets.

Perhaps the starkest illustration of private credit's vulnerabilities came in February 2026, when Blue Owl Capital, one of the biggest names in the space , announced it was permanently restricting withdrawals from its retail-focused private credit fund, Blue Owl Capital Corporation II (OBDC II). Shares in the firm tumbled nearly 10% on the news, hitting their lowest level in 2.5 years. The fund had been under sustained pressure from redemption requests since 2025. Quarterly redemption requests had exceeded the standard 5% cap, and in its tech-focused vehicle, withdrawal requests jumped to around 15% of net asset value. To raise liquidity, Blue Owl was forced to sell approximately $1.4 billion in direct-lending investments across three funds to pension funds and insurers. The episode exposed a fundamental structural flaw in semi-liquid private credit products: the promise of periodic liquidity simply cannot hold when underlying assets are illiquid by design. "This is a canary in the coal mine," said Dan Rasmussen, founder of Verdad Capital. "The private markets bubble is finally starting to burst." Blue Owl is not alone. Across the market, investors pulled more than $7 billion from some of the biggest private credit funds in the final quarter of 2025 alone, according to the Financial Times. And as the Federal Reserve cuts rates, the appeal of floating-rate private credit loans, which are the backbone of most fund portfolios, diminishes further.

Beyond liquidity, private credit has long faced transparency issues. Unlike publicly traded bonds, private loans rarely trade on secondary markets. Fund managers have wide discretion in pricing these assets, creating what critics call "stale marks" valuations that look healthy on paper but may mask deteriorating underlying performance. The US Department of Justice has publicly flagged "creative" valuation practices in private portfolios, while the SEC launched an inquiry into credit ratings firm Egan-Jones, placing the integrity of private credit ratings under a harsh spotlight. A BlackRock private-credit CLO even failed its over-collateralisation test, a structural stress signal that rattled institutional investors. The IMF has warned that valuation uncertainty incentivises fund managers to "delay the recognition of losses", a dynamic that ultimately hurts investors who redeem at inflated prices while those who stay are left holding deteriorating assets.

Experienced credit investors know that when borrowers start exercising payment-in-kind (PIK), essentially choosing to pay interest with more debt rather than cash, the stress is building. It’s something that exists and isn’t a sign of implosion in isolation, but it’s a bit like on the submarine, where someone says, “It always makes that noise”.  It’s probably fine. The increased prevalence of PIK arrangements across private credit portfolios is precisely the kind of late-cycle signal that preceded previous credit crises. Combined with covenant-lite structures that offer lenders little protection when things go wrong, the risk profile of many private credit funds looks considerably less attractive than their admittedly attractive marketing materials suggest.

The problems outlined above are not inherent to private lending itself; they are inherent to the fund structure through which most investors access it. Large, pooled private credit funds introduce layers of opacity, illiquidity, high minimum commitments, and management fees that compound even as returns compress. When markets turn, fund investors find themselves locked in, unable to exit, watching valuations lag reality by months or quarters. This is precisely where platforms like ours offer a compelling alternative. Rather than pooling capital into an opaque fund managed by a third party, we provide investors with direct access to individual property-backed loans. The difference matters enormously. In our sector, with direct lending, investors know exactly what they are lending against. Each loan is backed by a specific, tangible asset with an independently assessed value. There are no hidden exposures to highly leveraged corporate borrowers, no payment-in-kind structures, and no manager discretion over how portfolio losses are recognised. Transparency is baked in from the start. Liquidity management is also more straightforward; there is no cliff-edge liquidity crisis because there is no commingled fund structure to sustain. The fee picture is cleaner, too. Private credit funds typically charge management fees of 1–2% plus a performance carry of 15–20% on returns above a hurdle. On a direct lending platform, the economics flow more directly to the investor rather than being skimmed by an intermediary layer of fund management infrastructure.

Private credit funds grew to prominence because they filled a genuine gap, providing capital to businesses and projects that couldn't access bank finance or public markets. That gap still exists, and the demand for flexible, responsive lending hasn't gone away. What has changed is investor awareness of the risks embedded in the fund wrapper that delivers it. As institutional and retail investors alike grapple with gate provisions, murky valuations, and the sobering reality of funds like OBDC II being effectively frozen, demand will grow for more transparent, direct alternatives. Platforms like ours sit precisely at this intersection, offering the return potential of private lending without the structural risks that have made headlines over the past six months.

For investors willing to look beyond the big-name fund brands and embrace a more direct model, the disruption of traditional private credit funds may represent one of the more interesting opportunities of the current cycle, and perhaps for our sector, it’s the next thing to disrupt.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

In this week's blog, we picked up on a recent article in The Telegraph arguing that Labour’s proposed plan to build 1.5 million homes essentially amounts to a “war on homeowners,” claiming that rather than solving the housing crisis, it would, in reality, reduce property values by around 2%. The framing is deliberately provocative: a plea not only to embrace nimbyism, but to factually underpin it as a lifestyle choice. Increasing supply in any meaningful way will lead to lower prices, which means lost wealth, which means a government at war with the voting class. This argument deliberately confuses short-term price reactions with long-term value creation, and in this piece will attempt to reassure people about why this matters, and to assure everyone that we are very much in the value-creation business.  From a serious investment perspective, increasing housing supply is not an attack on homeowners; it is a structural reinforcement of the housing market and, by extension, the broader economy that supports property values. Let’s unpack this properly using economic theory, market psychology, and long-term capital allocation logic.

In the simplest economic model, prices are determined by supply and demand. The UK housing market has experienced decades of constrained supply planning restrictions, land banking, regulatory friction, and underbuilding relative to population growth. The result? Structurally elevated prices underpin the market. Yes, in the short run, a sudden increase in supply can put downward pressure on prices. That’s textbook economics. But the housing market does not exist in a static equilibrium. They are dynamic systems influenced by income growth, credit conditions, demographics, and productivity.

From a macroeconomic perspective, housing isn’t merely an investment vehicle. It’s core infrastructure. In growth theory, productive capacity depends on labour mobility and on the efficiency of capital allocation. When housing becomes prohibitively expensive, workers cannot move to productive areas. This constrains economic growth. In layperson's terms, slower growth equals weaker wage growth, which equals lower long-term housing demand. In other words, restricting supply to “protect” prices can undermine the very fundamentals that sustain those prices, because building houses increases geographic mobility and consumer spending, which ultimately support income, and, over the long run, rising income matches rising house prices. Property values can be increased by artificial scarcity, but they can’t be sustained. They are sustained by growing earning power.

We humans, are loss-averse. Behavioural economics, pioneered by thinkers like Daniel Kahneman, shows that people feel losses roughly twice as strongly as gains, so it’s only natural that a projected 2% drop in house prices feels threatening, even if it is trivial relative to long-term appreciation trends. But we must ask: what is the baseline? UK house prices have risen dramatically over the decades. A 2% fluctuation is well within normal volatility. Markets routinely move more than that in a quarter. Homeowners often anchor to peak valuations, a classic behavioural bias. Any deviation from that anchor feels like the destruction of wealth, even if the long-term trajectory remains intact. This is short-term thinking applied to a long-duration asset, and housing is not a day-traded instrument. It is a multi-decade store of value whose returns are driven primarily by inflation, wage growth, and credit markets. To perhaps summarise, a modest increase in supply does not erase these forces.

There are two ways property prices can remain high: artificial scarcity, which we have seen in recent years, and the much more desirable structural stability. Artificial scarcity, as much as it gives you the temporary feel-good factor of price inflation, creates serious fragility. When affordability collapses, demand becomes increasingly credit-dependent. The system becomes vulnerable to interest rate shocks, as we saw in the 2008 global financial crisis. When credit conditions tightened, overheated property markets corrected violently. By stark contrast, moderate, steady supply expansion builds resilience. Financial markets, like much of modern culture is dominated by short-term signalling, so a headline about a 2% potential price impact triggers emotional responses because humans overweight immediate outcomes relative to future gains, a concept known as hyperbolic discounting which sounds pretty fancy so we used it for the title of this blog, but in reality all it means is that we live the here and now, so we tend to align our thoughts in the same way. But property is the quintessential long-duration asset, and the way to frame the question more rationally is to ask “Will the UK economy be stronger or weaker over the next 20 years if housing supply improves?” If the answer is stronger, then the long-run effect on housing values is positive, not negative.

Our conclusion from all this is that we believe growth protects value, and our proposition and sector are central to ensuring that growth. In reality, sustainable prices require sustainable incomes, which in turn require economic growth, and economic growth requires housing accessibility. We fear stagnation far more than supply, because in markets as in nature, systems that do not adapt eventually collapse. Building homes is not a war on homeowners; it is an investment in the long-term durability of the housing market itself.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly, and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

In this week's blog, we have picked up on a counternarrative quietly emerging in the press: quite simply, we don’t need to build more homes, and the housing shortage is simply a direct result of wasted stock. To go a step further than that, it’s also being subtly suggested that the rambunctious slogansim of the 'build, build, build' strategy is steeped in commercial cynicism, a way to pave the way figuratively and literally for the big six to extend their balance sheets deeper into the Green Belt. So, let's unpack the data and have a look!

Over 50,000 homes in England are sitting empty long-term, unused, deteriorating, and tied up in capital, while millions of people struggle to find somewhere decent to live. This figure has fuelled the growing argument that Britain “doesn’t need to build more homes”, and that the housing shortage is really a problem of misused or wasted housing stock. While it’s true that empty homes are both a symptom and a contributor to wider housing issues, this argument on its own doesn’t solve the crisis. Understanding what these homes are, why they’re empty, and why the system is failing reveals both the potential and the limits of repurposing vacant properties, and ultimately underscores why building more homes must be part of the solution.

The 50,000 figure cited by campaign groups and commentators refers to long-term empty properties in England that have been vacant for 2 years or more and are not in regular use. These long-term vacancies are a small subset of the much larger number of empty properties nationwide: on the latest figures, hundreds of thousands of homes are vacant for more than six months, and when you include short-term empties, second homes and unoccupied exemptions, over one million dwellings are currently unoccupied in England. These empty homes are not a single homogeneous category; they include derelict and neglected properties, often in need of significant investment or refurbishment before they can be rented or sold. They also include probate or legal limbo homes, inherited properties tied up in legal disputes or stalled by family indecision. If you have even been contacted by a “heir hunter” regarding Great Aunt Dot's abandoned mansion, that would have likely been on a list included in these figures. The stats also include homes between tenancies or sales, the usual “churn” you see in healthy rental markets, which account for short periods of vacancy.

Despite the media focus on “50,000 empty homes,” it’s worth noting that long-term empties, the ones most often cited, are just a fraction of the total housing stock and even a smaller fraction of the homes that are physically empty at any given moment. The geographical distribution of these empty homes is also completely uneven, with long-term vacant properties often found in post-industrial towns, rural areas, and parts of the North of England, where economic demand and property values are lower. By contrast, areas with high housing pressure, such as London and the Southeast, also have empties but typically at lower rates as a proportion of stock. This distribution matters: a home sitting empty in a declining town can’t simply be moved to a booming city where tens of thousands of people need housing; the housing situation is not necessarily a numerical problem: housing is measured in functioning communities, not units.

Even if empty homes represent a real problem and a waste of useful stock, they cannot, on their own, resolve the broader housing crisis because the scale of the unmet need massively exceeds the empty stock. Government estimates put the required annual housing supply in England at hundreds of thousands of homes just to keep pace with population growth, household formation, and affordability pressures. Think tanks have suggested the UK has a cumulative shortfall of millions of homes built over the past decades, and location is everything. Empty homes often sit in areas without jobs, infrastructure, and economic demand, whereas much of the housing shortage is in high-demand areas like London, the Southeast, and growing regional cities, where job opportunities attract more people.

Even though supply alone won’t solve affordability problems, economic research shows that increasing housing supply puts downward pressure on prices and rents and improves access for new households. A supply shortage tends to entrench high prices over time. We believe that framing the debate as “empty homes vs new homes” is a false dichotomy. The right solution is multi-pronged: yes, it involves bringing empty homes back into use, but the key to unlocking the problems is increasing the annual supply to meet demographic and economic demand. This is done by reforming the entire planning system and supporting the funding mechanisms, such as our sector, so housing is built faster and in the right places.

Empty homes are a visible symptom of deeper flaws in Britain’s housing system, inefficiencies, poor allocation, and policy failure. They are a resource we should absolutely aim to use better, and we are not making light of that.

But they are not a silver bullet.

Their numbers are small relative to total unmet need, and converting them into homes won’t meet the scale or geography of demand. The reality is this: we need both smarter use of what we already have and significantly more homes built, quickly, affordably, and where people want to live. Ignoring one in favour of the other undermines a holistic response to one of Britain’s most pressing social challenges.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly, and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

In this week's blog, we have a look at a recent article in the Financial Times where the UK housing minister, Matthew Pennycook, stated that London’s high land prices “need a market adjustment.” The comment, understandably, has raised serious eyebrows across the property sector. Is this teeing up expectations to "Beware the Ides of March" for asset values? For long-term investors focused on sustainable value creation, however, it reads very differently. For Invest&Fund, this moment represents not a threat to the UK property market, but an unavoidable and necessary reset, one that could unlock more predictable returns, stronger partnerships, and a healthier investment environment over the medium to long term.

London’s residential property market has long been defined by scarcity-driven price appreciation. While this dynamic has always rewarded early-bird capital, it has also introduced volatility, political risk, and diminishing marginal returns for new investors. Escalating land values inflated development costs, constrained supply, and concentrated value in land rather than productive assets. Pennycook’s framing of a “market adjustment” signals a shift away from this age-old model. Crucially, the objective is not a collapse in asset values but a rebalancing in which land prices better reflect deliverability, planning reality, and long-term housing need. We see this transition is inherently constructive, because markets characterised by extreme price growth tend to discourage patient capital and favour short-term speculation. Markets that stabilise around fundamentals, by contrast, reward long-term structures, such as the success of our domestic development market. Or, to frame our point slightly differently, a flatter price environment does not eliminate returns; it simply shifts where returns come from.

One of the most significant takeaways from the Minister's remarks is the government’s recognition that the current housebuilding model is structurally constrained, which is something that we have historically spoken out on. The UK cannot meet housing demand relying solely on a small number of volume builders, optimising margins through a conveyor belt system of land banking, and the proposed direction, which includes greater public-private collaboration, diversified delivery models, and increased participation from institutional investors, aligns closely with Invest&Fund’s positioning & model.

High land prices have been one of the biggest barriers to new capital entering London. In many cases, land valuations assumed planning outcomes and sales prices that were increasingly unrealistic in a higher-rate, affordability-constrained world. A gradual market adjustment helps correct this mismatch, and for Invest&Fund, more realistic land pricing improves development viability, risk-adjusted returns, and downside protection. It also opens opportunities to acquire or partner on sites that were previously mispriced or stalled. Projects that did not work under aggressive price assumptions may become attractive when land costs reset and policy alignment improves. This is especially relevant for investors focused on long-term deployment rather than peak-cycle entry, and on the recycling of capital through the property market by backing its future development.

One implicit message in Pennycook’s comments is that the era of relying solely on perpetual house price inflation is ending, and I think anyone with a sense of the wider market is aware of that, the “easy cash” so to speak has been made, but smart income focused investors perhaps see this commentary as validation, professionally managed platforms such as ours for instance benefit from a market consisting of a more stable pricing environment, income visibility improves, enhancing portfolio resilience and making assets more attractive to long-term allocators, the liquidity needed to fuel the development cycle.

So, abandon all hope, ye who enter here? No, not really, the sobering commentary from the Minister doesn’t suggest abandoning London as an investment destination. Instead, they imply a more rational London market, one where returns are earned through execution, scale, and strategy rather than solely through scarcity. London is our home; it’s the home of this business, so we have an undeniable positive bias, but we are always honest in our assessments, and we believe that market adjustments are often framed as threats because they challenge old assumptions. In reality, they create space for better capital to outperform.

Taken together, the Minister's comments support a core Invest&Fund thesis: long-term, institutionally aligned capital is best positioned for the next phase of the UK housing market, whether this be improved entry prices for clients as land values flatten, greater alignment for government delivery goals, or just a reduced reliance on market speculators.

Rather than resisting adjustment, Invest&Fund can benefit from embracing it by continuing to deploy capital where pricing, policy, and long-term demand converge.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

In this week's thought exercise, we turn our attention to the ongoing tussle between the freehold investment community and the government over the ground rent caps introduced by the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. This is hitting the headlines once again, 18 months after it gained its much-needed Royal Assent, as people ponder how much of a financial unwind may actually be needed in the wake of these changes. Rather than defending the morally indefensible in a concerted effort to provide a balanced judgment, the spinoff topic we want to focus on is much closer to home: the notion that “what’s good for society is usually good for investors”.

And what do we mean by that?

We mean avoiding legitimacy risk is often prudent. That phrase isn’t about moralising investment decisions or pretending that markets exist to deliver social outcomes; they don’t, it’s led by returns first and foremost, let's all be honest here. However, it’s about recognising that markets, from an academic perspective (one we like to take to try to make sense of a fractious world), are embedded in society, not separate from it. They operate within political systems, legal frameworks, and public norms. When an asset class such as leasehold relies on friction, resentment, or power imbalances to generate returns, it is implicitly betting that those conditions will persist indefinitely, which, if you are a believer in society, is a risky bet.

For years, the direction of travel was obvious. Residential ground rents, particularly those embedded in leasehold housing, had become politically toxic. Campaigners were vocal, leaseholders were organised, and successive governments made clear that reform was not a question of if, but when. The political risk was neither hidden nor obscure, and it was not hard to model. It was sitting in plain sight. Leaseholders paid for an asset they did not meaningfully control, often in return for no service at all, under terms that could escalate over time and depress the value of their homes. It was an income stream that added little economic value while generating a growing sense of unfairness. That imbalance was always going to attract attention, and eventually, intervention.

This is where, in hindsight, institutional investors made their mistake. Ground rents were considered low risk because they were legally enforceable and historically stable. But legality and durability are not the same thing. Durability is reliant on perceived legitimacy in wider society. When an investment depends on an arrangement that large numbers of people experience as unjust, it carries a different kind of risk. Not market risk, but legitimacy risk. As Kennedy said, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” But unfortunately, there is a narrowing of perception when it comes to investment risk, and “perception-based futurism” can often be cast aside as ethereal or guesswork when people want products that are solely predictable, long-dated, and largely insulated from conventional economic cycles. But that predictability, without the bigger-picture and perhaps slightly ethereal thinking, rests on a brittle foundation, because with the exit of the guesswork, you're also tossing out the common sense. These incomes existed not because of innovation or productivity, the cornerstones of capitalism, but because of contractual structures that extracted value from people who often had no realistic ability to renegotiate or escape them.

How long was that going to last in a world where public perception alone drives modern political power structures? One of the few positive byproducts of the attention economy is that wrongdoing is often dragged kicking and screaming into the light. Some of the UK’s largest asset managers have publicly acknowledged that the reforms will have a tangible impact on their balance sheets, and these are not marginal adjustments. They are material write-downs in the hundreds of millions, driven not by a market crash, a liquidity shock, or a failure of execution, but by social and political change that had been signposted for years and years, on massive signs, those huge ones you sometimes see on the side of highways from three miles away. And ignored.

So, how does our offering fit into this perhaps slightly virtuous lecture on the value of moral hindsight?  Well, the Innovative Finance Individual Savings Account (IFISA) plays a valuable role in society; it’s returns-driven, but those returns aren’t generated through an obviously harmful act. Introduced to widen the scope of ISAs, the IFISA allows individuals to invest in private credit in a tax-efficient way. This helps channel private savings directly into productive parts of the economy, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are vital for job creation and innovation.

From a social perspective, the IFISA promotes financial inclusion and diversification. It gives investors access to alternative investments that were previously dominated by banks and institutional investors. By offering tax-free interest, it incentivises long-term saving and improves financial literacy, as investors are encouraged to understand risk, return, and the real economy behind their investments. And at the end of all of that, the legitimacy is that it provides much-needed housing; the end outcome is a net positive, so you're not running the risk of society deciding one day that this needs unravelling for the greater good. Laws are not static rules carved in stone; they are living instruments that must adapt as society evolves. This is why the UK government continues to support the Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) as part of its latest strategy to encourage investment, diversify savings options, and direct capital into British businesses.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business. To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

Most financial professionals eulogising over the great investors of the 20th Century will eventually boil down any one strategy to simple pragmatism. Long-termism, when it comes to orientation, direction, and compounding, focuses on the likelihood of return through the strength of the assets, not on meaning or sentiment. Yet by 2030, $80 Trillion will have flooded into the ESG sector, which, excluding the marquee technology plays, suggests that maybe investors do care about more than returns, maybe it’s a healthy mix of both returns and purpose? That in itself would be considered a contrarian or even naive view these days, citing greenwashing, funds pivoting, and following the returns, such as the $3 billion BlackRock invested in Fossil Fuels in 2025, but basic human psychology suggests it’s rarely one or the other. Money is never just money; it is a proxy for safety, status, identity, and values. When people invest, they aren’t only allocating capital, they are expressing beliefs about the future and, often unconsciously, about themselves.

If investors truly didn’t care what their money was doing, only what it earned, the story would be simple. Risk-adjusted returns would dominate every decision, and anything beyond price, growth, and volatility would be noise. But that world doesn’t exist. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, and few people enjoy profiting from outcomes that clash with their values, even if the spreadsheet looks kinda nice. So, what are we saying here? That was a heck of a long introduction without even mentioning the point of all this? Well, perhaps the question of “what is my money actually doing? is one that needs to be asked around the IFISA.

When you invest through an IFISA, your capital doesn’t disappear into abstract markets or distant indices. It attempts to provide healthy returns, as any product does, but it also supports UK businesses seeking finance to grow, operate, and create value for the greater good. This direct connection between investor and enterprise is one of the defining features of IFISA investing. It allows individuals to play an active role in supporting the domestic economy, helping British companies thrive while keeping capital working closer to home. For investors who value visibility and purpose, this approach can feel more grounded than traditional market exposure.  This is not an ESG investment, but at a psychological level, ESG investing and IFISAs that support UK businesses building homes appeal to a similar instinct, though they express it in different ways.

ESG often works through abstraction. Investors are told their capital is aligned with broad ideas of sustainability, fairness, and responsibility, usually filtered through scores, frameworks, and global narratives. This creates moral reassurance at scale, but also distance. The impact is real in principle, yet hard to visualise. Psychologically, this makes ESG easy to adopt without forcing investors to confront trade-offs too directly. It can feel like “doing good” without changing behaviour. IFISAs, which fund UK businesses to build homes, operate at the opposite end of the spectrum. The link between capital and outcome is concrete. Investors can picture houses being built, jobs being created, and communities expanding. This tangibility matters. Research shows people feel more emotionally engaged and more responsible when outcomes are visible and local. Supporting housing also taps into deep social values around stability, shelter, and contribution, rather than abstract global metrics. Perhaps that’s what we are saying here: there is a tangibility to what we are doing here, here are your returns, there are some houses, there is a clear input and output that appeals to investors, and for those who say it doesn’t, there are 80 trillion reasons to suggest otherwise.

For years, investing has often meant exposure to distant markets, complex instruments, and constant volatility driven by global headlines. While these approaches suit some, a growing number of people, particularly experienced and higher-earning investors, are seeking something different, an investment strategy that combines tax efficiency, transparency, and real-world impact. This is where the Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) is steadily gaining attention. At Invest&Fund, the IFISA allows investors to use their ISA allowance to fund real British businesses, while keeping any returns earned free from income tax and capital gains tax. Modern investing is increasingly shaped by headlines, social media, and short-term thinking. IFISA investing offers a quieter alternative. With fewer distractions and clearer terms, investors can focus on long-term objectives rather than reacting to daily news cycles. For many, this calmer approach is not just preferable, it’s more effective. IFISA investors help bridge this gap by providing capital to businesses that do not meet mainstream lending criteria. In return, investors gain exposure to opportunities unavailable in public markets, while businesses receive the finance they need to grow. A well-run IFISA platform like Invest&Fund prioritises transparency, education, and realistic expectations. Investors are encouraged to understand potential outcomes and choose opportunities aligned with their own financial circumstances.

Backing up the real-world positive impact are the core ingredients of any traditional investment strategy: a long-term outlook, with orientation, direction, and compounding. Many IFISA opportunities have historically targeted returns of around 7% before tax across diversified portfolios of UK business lending. By contrast, widely available cash and fixed-income products in the UK in 2026 offer materially lower net returns once higher-rate tax is applied: Easy-access and fixed-term savings accounts currently pay approximately 4.2%–4.5% AER. For a higher-rate taxpayer paying 40% tax on interest outside an ISA, this reduces the effective return to around 2.5%–2.7% after tax.

Perhaps the contrast we have outlined in this thought exercise exposes an important truth: many investors don’t just want ethical alignment; they want narrative clarity. ESG offers moral framing; IFISAs offer causal clarity. One reassures identity, the other satisfies purpose.

Neither approach escapes the desire for returns. But IFISAs reveal that when impact is understandable and close to home, caring about what your money does becomes less performative and more psychologically real.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business.
To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

"I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them," said wistful  Andy Bernard in the series finale of the Amercian version of “The Office”. This much ‘memed’ (we believe that’s the correct colloquial parlance of the 21st Century, we are catching up) and likely off-the-cuff lament for times gone by has securely cemented itself within the modern pop culture phenomenon of ‘doomerism’, this idea that the good times have slipped away, and nobody can fully understand as to why. BUT it also triggered some deeper thought for this week's blog offering. What if this perspective is all wrong? What if we are so addicted to the comfort of negativity that it’s become almost performative and expected? What if the data provides a contrarian viewpoint? To counter the argument that a contrarian viewpoint in a difficult economy is simply gaslighting by any other name, we look at the data on housing and ask ourselves: are we, like Andy Bernard, unaware that we are still in the good old days?

Let’s start with something that sounds uncomfortably optimistic for many readers: analysts at Citi, one of the world’s largest investment banks, have noted early “green shoots” in the UK housing market, indicating that key indicators which had softened through late 2025 and the seasonal slowdown may be showing tentative signs of stabilising. These “green shoots” aren’t dramatic; they’re not a 2005-style boom, but they matter precisely because they contradict the narrative that the UK market is stagnation personified. When a bank that built its reputation on data-driven macro insights sees fragility giving way to softness that could turn into momentum, it’s worth taking seriously. If we take this signal at face value, then one could argue that we are at least flirting with the early phases of recovery, not collapse. It’s a reminder that data often moves before sentiment (and sentiment, in turn, drives headlines). A market that recovers quickly, without any state-level intervention anticipated, i.e., stimulus on the buy or sell side (which, as free-market fans, we are not the biggest fans of), is a strong market that doesn’t necessarily fit the narrative that the glory days of housing are in the rear-view mirror.

Often, when commentators speak of a housing “crisis”, they inadvertently paint the whole country with one brush. Yet the data shows substantial regional divergence, another reason to question a negative outlook. Recent analysis from property portal Rightmove forecasts modest growth in UK house prices in 2026, with asking prices expected to rise around 2% over the year, driven by improved affordability, wage growth outpacing house price increases, and lower mortgage rates. Moreover, lower-priced regions, such as northern England and Wales, are expected to outperform higher-priced southern markets as demand shifts to more affordable areas. This divergence is crucial. It tells us that one dystopian narrative, “housing opportunity is dead everywhere”, simply doesn’t align with reality. Instead, parts of the UK market show signs of resilience and actual activity.

There’s a psychological element at play here, too. We have cultural mechanisms that tend to amplify negative narratives, loss aversion, confirmation bias, and a media environment where bad news feels more newsworthy than stability. But here’s the thing: narratives shape behaviour, and a dominant doomer frame can become self-fulfilling. Buyers delay purchases “because it’s going to be cheaper later,” sellers hold back listings, developers pause projects, all because everyone expects the worst. That’s not data-driven analysis; that’s a self-reinforcing belief. Yet hard data ranging from rising enquiries and green slices of market recovery to regional growth forecasts and affordability dynamics suggests a far more nuanced market. Not everything is booming, but there are clear pockets of momentum, resilience, and emerging opportunity that belie the idea that “the good times are definitely over.”

So, in terms of the property market at least, are we still in “the good old days of the roaring 20s?”

Maybe. While challenges persist, the data increasingly supports a view that the UK housing market is transitioning from contraction to consolidation, with selective areas showing early signs of renewed momentum. We will only realise in hindsight that late 2025 and early 2026 were transitional moments of stability, renewed activity, and evolving opportunity in the UK housing market. Andy Bernard might tell us we’re too close to see it. But if we let data rather than narrative guide our thinking, we might conclude that doomism has been more dramatic than actual market signals warrant, at least for now. Maybe we’re not in the roaring boom of the early 1920s. But maybe, just maybe, we’re in a period of measured recovery, adjustment, and quiet resilience that future observers will look back on fondly not with wistful regret, but with recognition that the market was righting itself, quietly and fundamentally.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business.

To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

As we welcome 2026, it is customary in the UK for many to have a clear-out, alongside Dry January and the self-deception of gym-based pledges. As we now exist in a world of immediate gratification, we start Christmas in October, we just about have time for Spring cleaning in January, before the shops are filled with Easter Eggs in February. So to continue on that rushed vein, amongst the bin liners of ragged tinsel, we are clearing out some of the old topics we have long debated, with a final look at house price predictions before this narrative goes back in the loft with the threadbare tree for another year.

As the UK housing market trundles through the latter half of the decade (which in itself sounds strange), professional commentators are broadly aligned on one point: 2026 is unlikely to be a year of dramatic house price movement in either direction. Please keep reading, though, albeit I appreciate that neuters this one somewhat before we even begin. Most published & professional analysts expect a continuation of the themes that have shaped the post-pandemic market: affordability pressure, constrained supply, and cautious sentiment.

After the volatility of 2022–2024, driven by sharp interest-rate rises and inflationary shocks, the market has likely now entered a more stabilised phase, and by later in 2026, consensus forecasts suggest mortgage rates will be lower than their recent peaks but still materially higher than the ultra-cheap debt environment of the 2010s. This “new normal” for borrowing costs is expected to cap how far prices can rise, even if demand remains resilient.

Economists are predicting modest nominal price growth, typically in the low single digits. When adjusted for inflation, many active voices online are forecasting that real house prices could be broadly flat or even slightly negative. In other words, while prices may edge higher in cash terms, their purchasing power is unlikely to increase meaningfully. Affordability remains the central constraint. Wage growth has improved, but not enough to fully offset higher mortgage costs and elevated living expenses. As a result, first-time buyer demand (historically a key driver of price inflation) is expected to stay subdued. Professional commentators often describe the market as “two-speed”: prime and supply-constrained locations may see firmer pricing, while secondary markets remain sensitive to economic headwinds.

As we frequently & historically comment on, supply dynamics also play a critical role in 2026 forecasts. The UK continues to underbuild relative to household formation, which provides a structural floor under prices. However, developers, our clients, face their own challenges: higher build costs, tighter planning regimes, and cautious development finance markets. These factors limit new supply but also restrain aggressive land bidding, which historically fuels price booms.

Importantly, and this is probably what most readers are interested in, most commentators do not foresee a major crash. The lending environment in the UK and across the Western world is far more conservative than in previous cycles, with stricter affordability tests and lower leverage across the system. Forced selling remains limited, employment is relatively robust, and homeowner equity levels are high. This combination supports stability rather than sharp correction. In short, the professional consensus for 2026 is one of moderation: neither a return to rapid house price inflation nor a dramatic downturn, but a market adjusting to higher capital costs and more realistic growth expectations. So I know what you're thinking, if you have made it this far, that’s all pretty vanilla, we know this, what are you actually saying here?

Well, perhaps what we are saying here, and maybe this is why we are anxious to get this topic filed away under yesterday's news, is that even though it dominates discourse, it’s essentially not that relevant.

While headlines about house prices often dominate property discussions, their relevance depends entirely on perspective. For platforms like ours, high house price inflation is not inherently positive and can often be counterproductive. It’s the one metric that everyone is conflicted about: an overvalued property looks great on paper, but not so great in the market. In development finance, rising prices are frequently accompanied by rising costs. When residential values rise rapidly, land prices follow suit. Build costs tend to rise as labour and materials become more expensive, and competition for sites intensifies. The result is that developers’ margins are often squeezed, not expanded, during periods of strong price inflation. There is, in fact, a negative correlation between rapid house price growth and the ability to build and sell homes at scale. Elevated land values make schemes less viable, slow planning negotiations, and reduce the pool of deliverable projects. In contrast, stable or modestly growing markets allow developers to price risk more accurately, control costs, and bring forward schemes with greater confidence.

This is why Invest&Fund’s approach is deliberately structured around conservative leverage and downside resilience, rather than speculative assumptions about future valuations. Loan-to-value ratios of 65–70% of Gross Development Value (GDV) are not arbitrary; they are designed to absorb valuation movements, cost overruns, and market softening without impairing borrower or investor outcomes. By lending well below total GDV, Invest&Fund builds in a substantial equity buffer from day one. This means that even if exit values are lower than originally forecast, due to macroeconomic factors, interest-rate changes, or local market shifts, the loan's structure remains robust. Borrowers retain flexibility, and investors benefit from capital protection that does not rely on optimistic house price growth.

Crucially, this disciplined approach aligns interests across the entire transaction. Developers are incentivised to focus on delivery and execution, not speculation. Investors receive returns generated by contractual interest and prudent risk management, rather than exposure to cyclical valuation swings. In a market environment like that expected in 2026, stable, cautious, and shaped by affordability, this philosophy becomes even more relevant. Success is determined less by where headline house prices go and more by how well projects are structured, financed, and managed.

Ultimately, Invest&Fund is not in the business of predicting house price cycles; we have no crystal ball, we have no driver to feed sensationalism, or the pseudo-science of transactional data. It is in the business of financing real assets with real margins, underwritten on the basis that markets can move both ways. In that context, whether prices rise modestly, stagnate, or soften slightly matters far less than ensuring that every loan is built to withstand uncertainty.

And that is precisely why conservative leverage, realistic GDVs, and disciplined underwriting remain at the core of the Invest&Fund model, regardless of what 2026 brings, and is why the age-old debate around house prices is very much being packed away for now as we move on to pastures new for 2026.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business.

To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

As this is our last weekly blog before Christmas, it's timely to reflect on where the UK peer-to-peer (P2P) lending sector stood in 2025 and have a peek at what comes next. In a year dominated by the rise of the great Quangocracy, unaccountable, unelected clever people chipping in their two cents, we feel it's crucial in a small way to contribute to that, and to contribute our own unsolicited musings to the grumbling discourse.

So let's recap. For our community of investors, borrowers, and supporters, the past 12 months have underscored both the resilience and evolution of alternative finance. This year's landscape has reaffirmed that peer-to-peer lending is no longer a fringe experiment; it is now a structured, maturing asset class that continues to attract both retail and institutional attention. 2025 has underscored a broader trend and affirmed what we suspected and wrote about last year: there has been an evolution of sorts beyond its original retail-to-retail model, making it a key part of the growing private credit ecosystem. Based on this year's activity, we can only foresee an increasing role for private credit and asset-backed business lending. As traditional banks tighten lending standards, SMEs and developers may increasingly rely on P2P platforms and private credit lenders, especially those offering property-secured loans, such as ours.

"The examined life is no picnic", Robert Fulghum once stated, and when you recall 2025, we would likely need more than a meagre 900 characters or less to do the challenges justice. A central theme all year has been persistently elevated inflation and its impact on households. By mid-2025, inflation (CPI) rebounded to around 3.7 – 3.8%. Meanwhile, prices for essential goods and services, food, energy, and utilities have remained high. In response, the Bank of England (BoE) maintained interest rates around 4.0% for much of the year, citing inflation risks and the need for caution. While the UK economy avoided a sharp recession, growth in 2025 has been modest at best. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and other forecasters, real GDP growth is expected to hover around 1.3% this year. At the same time, productivity growth remains stubbornly weak, a structural challenge the economy has been grappling with since before the pandemic. Business sentiment has suffered: higher borrowing costs, uncertain demand, and rising input costs have discouraged many firms from investing, resulting in depressed business investment as a share of GDP. The combination of subdued growth, weak productivity, and weak investment is widely seen as constraining the UK's medium-term growth potential and weighing on living standards.

As a result of embedded uncertainty, across the UK P2P market in 2025, investors have shown renewed interest in platforms offering secure, asset-backed lending, especially as traditional fixed-income yields remain under pressure. Rather than chasing volume, the emphasis is on quality, transparency, and realistic underwriting. Against that backdrop, Invest & Fund's disciplined model, consistent performance, and transparent practices position it well as a top-tier P2P option for investors seeking steady, manageable returns rather than speculative, high-risk bets. One of the perennial aspects of our asset class is that, in times of plenty, we benefit from the strength of our clients' businesses, and in times of need, we benefit from assisting them. Like all great disruptive plays, you twist in the wind and make any picture your own.

The labour market has softened in 2025 compared with the post-pandemic boom. Unemployment rose to around 5% by mid-year. Employment growth has stagnated, and many businesses, facing cost pressures and weak demand, have pulled back on hiring and investment. Meanwhile, although wage growth is positive, it has failed to keep pace with inflation for many workers. As a result, real incomes remain under pressure. This combination of rising unemployment, soft hiring, and squeezed real incomes has contributed to weak consumer sentiment, adding another drag on consumption and economic momentum.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. Despite economic headwinds (rates, inflation, cost of living), the underlying demand for housing remains substantial in many parts of the UK. With population growth, migration, and long-term undersupply, developers who move carefully are well positioned to secure viable exit strategies. For those building now (especially modest-to-mid-scale residential developments, renovations, or conversions), there remains a stable pool of potential buyers or tenants, helping justify building starts and new projects.

Given higher borrowing costs and increased caution among banks and traditional lenders, many developers have become more selective in their project choices, favouring smaller, more manageable developments or renovations over speculative or overly ambitious builds. That's meant more conservative planning: realistic cost estimates, modest scale, prioritising lower-risk projects, and managing potential cost overruns. For home-building that's good: it reduces the likelihood of over-extension, keeps projects more deliverable, and supports healthier long-term outcomes. For our sector, it means the asset class within the asset class is healthy and underpinned by the highest-quality businesses, naturally selected by those who can operate in this environment.

Sadly, the Darwinist element of survival in homebuilding means it's a harsh industry in which fewer SMEs can operate, but the positive aspect is that we are backing those who can flourish in more challenging times. The pressure to manage costs and risk has forced developers to be more rigorous this year: more realistic appraisals, conservative loan-to-value ratios, better exit-strategy planning, and improved contingency measures for delays or cost shocks. The excess years of the past have long since been purged from the sector. While that might slow speculative, high-risk building booms, it tends to produce better-quality housing developments, fewer project failures, and more stable outcomes, which, in the long run, are likely healthier for the housing stock and investor confidence.

If you have read this far or if you have enjoyed reading any of our weekly pieces in 2025, we would like to thank you. Invest&Fund will be open for business across the festive period, working diligently with our clients to ensure the best outcomes for our investors and partners.

We want to wish you all a very Happy Christmas, and we will see you in 2026.

Invest & Fund has returned over £330 million of capital and interest to lenders with zero losses, showing the rigour that governs our business.

To take maximum advantage of this robust and exciting asset class, please visit www.investandfund.com

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money quickly and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.