Refinancing out of development loans has picked up faster in Newcastle than anywhere else we track. Over the year to June 2026, exit and refinance charges against Newcastle and Gateshead borrowers rose by 80%, the steepest increase among the 33 locations with at least 30 such charges. For a developer heading towards practical completion on Tyneside, that is the most useful number in this briefing, because it says the refinance route is open and getting busier.
We put together the latest Companies House charge filings, HM Land Registry sales and Gateshead Council planning decisions to see where schemes across Newcastle and Gateshead stand after the first half of 2026. The full dataset, with quarterly charts and the national comparison, sits in the Newcastle development exit report. This page draws out what it means for anyone building or refinancing locally.
Exit lending has nearly doubled
Development exit and refinance charges rose to 36 in the 12 months to June 2026, up from 20 in the year before. They were taken by 19 borrowing companies, against 11 a year earlier. Nationally the same measure rose by just 3.4%.
The mix has shifted too. Of the 36 charges, 20 came from specialist banks and 16 from bridging lenders, so bridging money now accounts for a much larger part of Tyneside exits than it did. The first half of 2026 alone produced 18 exit charges, against 11 in the first half of 2025.
The base is small, so a handful of facilities can move the percentage a long way. The direction is still clear: more Newcastle developers are refinancing finished or nearly finished stock rather than selling straight off their build loan.
New development lending is up a quarter
Development lenders registered 69 new charges against Newcastle and Gateshead sites and developers over the year, up from 55. That is growth of 25.5%, well ahead of the national rise of 11.7%. The charges were spread across 38 borrowing companies.
The first half of 2026 continued the trend, with 38 new charges against 31 a year earlier. Filings for recent months are provisional and tend to rise as late registrations arrive.
New company formation points the same way. 412 property SPVs were incorporated in the area over the year, up 16.1% on the 355 of the year before.
Repayments are lagging
Repayments have not kept pace. Lenders filed 18 development charges as satisfied over the year, against 19 the year before. That gives 0.26 repayments for every new development charge, well below the national ratio of 0.40.
Satisfactions are often filed months after a loan is repaid, and a charge is a security document rather than a loan balance. Even allowing for that, new development lending in Newcastle is running well ahead of repayments, so the local loan book is growing.
The live book is in line with the country
Of the 276 development charges still live in Newcastle and Gateshead at 30 June 2026, 60.5% had been registered more than 24 months earlier, almost exactly the national figure of 60.6%. Two thirds (66.7%) were older than 18 months.
Most development facilities are written for 18 to 24 months, so a large share of the local book has run past its original term. That is a national pattern rather than a Tyneside one, but it still matters for anyone negotiating an extension: lenders see a lot of overrunning schemes, and they price for it.
New-build sales: a strong share, softer volumes
Land Registry records new-build sales slowly, so we read them over the latest settled year, August 2024 to July 2025. Newcastle and Gateshead recorded 765 new-build sales in that window, down 11.3% from 862 the year before. New-build still made up 11.7% of all sales, comfortably above the national share of 8.3%.
Almost all of that new-build activity is houses. New-build houses sold at a median of £272,995, 41.8% above the £192,500 median for existing houses. New-build flat sales were too few to give a reliable price, which is itself a signal: apartment schemes here need a clear exit plan, because there is little recent new-build flat evidence for a valuer to lean on.
Planning: Gateshead approvals
Our planning feed currently covers Gateshead Council but not Newcastle City Council, so these figures describe half of the area. Gateshead approved 148 relevant residential applications in the year to 20 September 2026, with 74 still pending. Where a unit count was stated, the approvals added 772 homes across 33 applications.
The larger consents are suburban. The biggest was a 270 home demolition and rebuild at West Farm, Kibblesworth, followed by 106 homes on land at Lansbury Drive, Birtley. That fits the sales picture, with house-led schemes carrying most of the new supply.
What to take from it
Newcastle has growing development lending, a sharp rise in refinancing and a new-build market led by houses at a healthy premium. If you are approaching completion, the busier refinance market is good news, but expect bridging lenders to be part of the conversation and plan your exit evidence early, particularly on flats. Across all property-secured lending in the area, specialist lenders took 87.5% of matched charges over the year, close to the national 88.4%. If your scheme is aimed at students, our Newcastle student accommodation development report covers that market separately.
Sources: Companies House charge register, HM Land Registry Price Paid Data and Gateshead Council planning records, analysed by Construction Capital. Planning figures cover Gateshead only. Figures for 2026 are provisional. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.