How the 6-Month Mortgage Rule Affects Your Bridging Loan Exit

You’ve just finished your property refurbishment in record time. The place looks brilliant, it’s worth far more than you paid, and you’re ready to refinance out of your bridging loan.

There’s just one problem: most mortgage lenders won’t touch you for another three months. You’re stuck paying expensive monthly interest charges whilst you wait, watching your profits shrink week by week.

This is the ‘6-month mortgage rule’ in action.

It’s an industry guideline that stops most mainstream lenders from offering mortgages on properties you’ve owned for less than six months. For property investors using bridging finance, which is designed for short-term use, this creates a painful timing mismatch. In this article, you’ll see exactly what the rule costs, how to plan around it, and which circumstances might give you some flexibility.

What Is the 6-Month Mortgage Rule?

The 6-month mortgage rule is straightforward enough.

Most high street lenders won’t give you a mortgage on a property you’ve owned for less than six months. It’s not law, just an industry guideline that came from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (now UK Finance) after the 2008 financial crisis.

The rule was designed to stop back-to-back property deals where people would buy a property, get it revalued at an inflated price, and immediately take out a mortgage for more than they paid. These schemes fell apart during the crash and left lenders holding properties worth far less than the loans secured against them.

Here’s the catch that trips people up: the six-month clock starts from Land Registry registration, not your completion date.

Land Registry can take weeks or even months to process applications, which means your waiting period starts later than you expect. If you complete in January but Land Registry doesn’t register you until February, you can’t refinance until August at the earliest. This timing detail catches out even experienced property investors who assume the clock starts ticking from completion day.

Why Bridging Borrowers Feel the Pain Most

Bridging loans are designed for short-term use, with interest charged monthly. You might plan for a three-month bridge to complete quick refurbishment work, expecting to refinance onto a cheaper mortgage once the property’s in good condition.

But the 6-month rule means you’ll need to hold that expensive finance for double your planned timeline, paying higher interest the whole time. What looked like a neat three-month project suddenly becomes a six-month holding period, and those extra months of interest payments eat directly into your profit.

This timing mismatch hits hardest in specific scenarios.

Property developers who finish refurbishment works in eight weeks still have months of waiting ahead, whilst people flipping properties find their buyers can’t get mortgages because the property’s too new in their ownership.

In every case, the actual work gets done quickly but the refinancing has to wait, and that waiting costs real money.

Related: What Checks Do Bridging Loan Companies Carry Out?

The Real Cost of Getting Caught Out

Here’s what this actually costs with real numbers. If you borrow £250,000 for three months at 0.75% monthly interest, you’ll pay £5,625 in interest charges.

When you try to refinance at three months, lenders turn you down because you haven’t owned the property long enough, so you need to extend your bridge for another three months at another £5,625. Add your 2% arrangement fee (£5,000 on a £250,000 loan) and you’ve spent £16,250 total. That’s a substantial chunk of your profit gone just because you didn’t plan for the six-month wait from the beginning.

Planning Ahead Saves Money

Compare that with planning for six months from the start.

If you take a six-month bridging loan at 0.65% monthly interest (lenders often give slightly better rates for longer terms), you’ll pay £9,750 in interest. Add the same £5,000 arrangement fee and your total cost is £14,750, saving you £1,500 just by planning realistically from day one and avoiding the stress of hoping you’ll get away with a shorter term.

Bridge-to-let products work differently again. You pay slightly higher interest, perhaps 0.70% monthly, but your exit to a buy-to-let mortgage is built into the deal from day one. Using the same £250,000 example, you might pay around £10,500 in interest plus your £5,000 arrangement fee for a total of £15,500. That’s £750 more than planning a standard six-month bridge, but you’re buying certainty because your lender has committed to refinancing you at the end rather than hoping another lender will accept you.

Related: Buy-to-Let Bridging Loans: Fast Investment Funding

Planning Your Timeline Around the Rule

You need to decide whether to plan for six months from the start or risk a shorter term and potentially face extension costs.

The sensible approach is to build six months into your budget if your refurbishment works will take three or four months anyway, since you’ll be close to the six-month mark by the time everything’s finished. Auction buyers should plan for the full six months too, since that rushed 28-day completion means you need padding everywhere else in your timeline.

First-time developers benefit from planning conservatively because projects almost always take longer than you expect, and you don’t want to learn that lesson whilst paying extension fees. If you want cost certainty over potential savings, the six-month approach gives you peace of mind, and you can use any waiting time productively by finding tenants for a buy-to-let property or marketing the property for sale if you’re planning to flip it.

Project-Specific Realities

For refurbishment projects, finishing your works in eight weeks doesn’t mean you can refinance in eight weeks since you’ve still got months of waiting ahead. The property needs to be in mortgageable condition before your six months are up, but don’t cut your works timeline so tight that delays push you past that deadline.

For property flips, you face a choice between selling to cash buyers (who’ll usually want a discount for the convenience) or waiting out the six months, and you need to do the maths on your specific deal. Is a 5% discount to a cash buyer better or worse than paying three extra months of bridge interest at 0.75% monthly?

Can You Get Around the Rule?

About 15-20% of mortgage lenders will consider properties owned for less than six months in specific circumstances, but you’ll need to find these lenders rather than assuming any mainstream bank will help. They tend to be smaller, more specialist lenders, not the typical high street banks.

Inherited properties where you have probate documents often qualify for exceptions. Properties with substantial documented improvements (receipts for all works, before-and-after photos, and professional valuations showing genuine increased value) might find willing lenders.

What matters here is both documentation and knowing which lenders to approach.

You need a complete audit trail: professional valuations rather than estate agent estimates, building regulation certificates if you’ve done structural work, and proof of everything. But even with perfect paperwork, you’re looking for one of the minority of lenders who’ll accept your situation. This is where specialist brokers make a real difference, because they know exactly which mortgage lenders will consider sub-six-month applications.

Without this knowledge, you’ll face rejection after rejection from high street banks who won’t even look at your case.

Planning Beats Hoping

The 6-month rule affects most bridging scenarios, but planning for six months from the start costs less than hoping for three months and scrambling for extensions.

If you are set on remortgaging within the first six months then you should get that long-term lender lined up before you complete on the initial purchase.

Whether you’re buying your first auction property or approaching your bridge end date, specialist advice can structure the right solution for your specific situation. Call us on 0330 030 5050 to discuss your project. Our minimum loan value is £150,000, and our services are for investment properties rather than main residences.