Barnet developers borrowed more over the last year, repaid more, and sold more new homes. On most measures the borough looks healthier than the London average. But the first half of 2026 brought a slowdown in new development lending, and a large planning queue is building behind it. Both matter if you are planning how to exit a scheme in the next year.
This guide reads the latest Companies House, Land Registry and planning data for the London Borough of Barnet. The full dataset, with charts and a comparison against England and Wales, is in our Barnet development exit data report.
Development lending: up on the year, softer in 2026
Development lenders registered 164 new charges against Barnet sites and developers in the 12 months to June 2026, up from 129 in the year before, a 27% rise. 97 separate companies took those charges.
The pace eased in 2026 itself. The first half of the year brought 53 new development charges, against 63 in the first half of 2025. That could be a pause or the start of a slowdown. Either way, lenders are being more selective about new schemes than they were a year ago.
Repayments caught up
The stronger signal is on the exit side. 58 Barnet development charges were filed as repaid in the year to June 2026, up from 32 the year before. That is 0.35 repayments for every new charge, close to the national 0.40, and repayment filings for recent months are still arriving.
Development loans repaid in the year had been in place for a median of 23.9 months, a little quicker than the 25.2 months of the year before.
Loan age: in line with the country
Of the 678 development charges live in Barnet at 30 June 2026, 60.2% had been registered more than 24 months earlier. The England and Wales figure was 60.6%, so Barnet sits right on the national line. Almost 70% of the live book is older than 18 months.
In practice, most live Barnet schemes are at or past the point where a typical development facility runs out. Some of those will repay from sales. Others will need to refinance.
New-build sales rose sharply
Land Registry records new-build sales up to a year late, so we read them over the latest settled year, August 2024 to July 2025. Barnet recorded 453 new-build sales in that window, up 65% on the 275 of the year before. New-build made up 11.8% of all sales, against 8.3% nationally.
Almost all of it was flats: 450 of the 453. New-build flats sold at a median of £515,900, 29% above the £399,950 median for existing flats in the borough. Across the whole market, sales were flat on the year at 3,520 in the latest settled 12 months.
For exit lenders this is the most useful evidence in the borough. A steady flow of new-build flat sales at a clear premium gives a lender something concrete to size a sales-period loan against.
The exit lending market
Bridging lenders, specialist banks and private credit funds registered 69 charges against Barnet development companies in the year to June 2026, up 13% on the 61 of the year before. The split was close to even: 36 from bridging lenders, 33 from specialist banks.
Across all property charges in the borough, specialist lenders hold 90.0% of those we can match to a lender type, slightly above the national 88.4%.
A planning queue building up
The London Borough of Barnet approved 192 residential applications in its latest 12-month window, and 738 were still pending. Most approvals were small: conversions, changes of use and single-plot rebuilds rather than large blocks. That long pending list is the pipeline for 2027 and 2028.
Company formation points the same way. 1,143 development and property companies were registered in Barnet in the year to June 2026, 340 of them as developers.
What this means for your exit
- If your scheme is close to completion and your development facility has less than six months to run, start the refinance conversation now. The local book is old and lenders will price extensions accordingly.
- Use the local sales evidence. A 29% premium on new-build flats and rising new-build volumes are exactly what an exit lender wants to see.
- Expect competition for good cases. Exit-type lending to Barnet developers grew over the year, and a clean scheme with evidence of sales should attract more than one offer.
We arrange exit bridging and refinance for Barnet schemes at or near practical completion. Every case is underwritten individually, so terms depend on the scheme, the sales evidence and the developer, and no facility is guaranteed. Development exit finance for companies is unregulated lending.
Data: Companies House charge register and company data, HM Land Registry Price Paid Data and London Borough of Barnet planning records, analysed by Construction Capital. Lenders are grouped by type and never named. A charge is a security document, so counts show loans taken and repaid, not their value.