Building lasting relationships with younger borrowers is becoming an increasingly important focus for mortgage brokers as client expectations continue to evolve.
Sarah Thompson, Group Financial Services Director at Mortgage Scout, part of LRG, explores how advisers can move beyond a transactional approach to deliver more personalised, flexible and relationship-driven advice.
The UK mortgage market is serving a more diverse range of borrowers than ever before. The average age of a first-time buyer is now around 33 to 34, up by roughly five years over the past two decades, and it is changing who we are advising and what they need from us.
These are buyers who are older, better informed, and more varied in how they want to engage than at any previous point. For brokers who adapt to that, it represents a significant opportunity to build deeper, longer-lasting client relationships from the very first interaction.
They are not a single type, though; there are significant differences in how people prefer to communicate, how much they already know, and what kind of support they need. One of the clearest differences I notice between client groups is around communication style. Clients who came of age in the nineties and noughties tend to be comfortable with email and phone calls.
They grew up with those tools and naturally default to them. Younger clients, particularly those in their mid to late twenties, are often different. Many prefer to communicate by text because they respond faster, and it fits better with how they manage their day. Some are actively cautious about phone calls from numbers they don’t recognise, not out of awkwardness, but because they are thoughtful about their time and attention.
Younger clients are much more likely to want face-to-face or video contact than you might expect. Having grown up with so much that is digital and automated, a real conversation with a knowledgeable human feels genuinely valuable to them.
The key is that preferences vary enormously from person to person, and the most important thing an adviser can do is pick them up early and respond to them. How someone makes first contact, which channel they use to reply, how quickly they respond to different types of outreach: all of it tells you something useful.
There is also a growing awareness around neurodiversity that shapes this. Younger clients are much more likely to know and name their own communication preferences, whether that is because they process information differently, find certain interactions harder, or simply work in a way that does not fit a standard mould.
That openness is a good thing. It means they will often tell you what works for them if you give them the space to do so, and adjusting your approach accordingly makes for a far more productive relationship.
There is more information available to borrowers now than there has ever been. Comparison sites, online calculators, social media, AI tools: first-time buyers often arrive having done a significant amount of research before they ever speak to a broker. That is genuinely useful. It means conversations can move faster and go deeper. At the same time, the volume of information available makes it harder to know what is current, accurate, and relevant to a specific situation.
Clients who have received advice from parents or other family members before coming to us is something we see regularly. That advice is almost always well-intentioned, but the mortgage market of 2010 or 2015 looks very different to the one that exists today.
Rate environments change, lender criteria evolve, and products that made sense a decade ago may not be the right fit now. Part of our job is to bring clients gently up to date, acknowledging what they have already been told while making sure the advice they act on reflects the market as it actually stands.
Many younger buyers are also purchasing with financial support from parents or grandparents, whether that is a gifted deposit or a contribution towards costs. Where clients want it, including family members in the conversation can be useful.
It ensures everyone understands what is happening, addresses questions, and gives the people supporting a purchase confidence that the process is in good hands. It is a small adjustment that makes a difference to how supported a client feels at what is, for most people, the most significant financial decision of their life.
Across all client groups, the mortgage process has a reputation for being more complicated than it needs to be. Some of that complexity is inherent and unavoidable. Much of it is not. The adviser’s job is to carry the complexity on behalf of the client, not to pass it on to them.
Practically, that means being flexible about how clients submit documents, whether through a secure portal, by email, or in person. It means being available through the channels that work for them. It means giving clear, plain-English explanations of why a particular recommendation makes sense rather than just what it is. And it means keeping clients informed at each stage so they are never left wondering what happens next.
In a volatile market, context matters more than ever. Clients across all age groups benefit from understanding why rates are moving and what that means for their options. For borrowers who have not been through a rate cycle before, that context is not background noise. It is the difference between a decision that feels informed and one that feels like a leap of faith. Taking the time to explain the market clearly, and to show how a recommendation accounts for that uncertainty is what builds genuine confidence.
Building a relationship with a younger client requires more than getting the product right. Younger borrowers will move on if the experience does not feel right or the value is not obvious, and they will not lose sleep over it. Previous generations tended to stay with an adviser out of habit; if the mortgage got done and nothing went obviously wrong, the relationship continued.
That is less true today. The value of good advice needs to be visible throughout the process, not just at the point of recommendation, and clients need to feel that what they are getting from a broker is something they could not have got elsewhere.
When that is clear, the opportunity is significant. A first-time buyer who feels genuinely well served is a client for life. They come back when their fixed rate ends, when they move, when their circumstances change, and they refer friends and family going through the same thing. That pipeline of repeat and referred business is the direct result of an experience that felt personal, clear, and genuinely in their interest from start to finish.
The brokers who are getting this right are not necessarily doing anything radical. They are listening carefully, adapting how they work to suit the person in front of them, and making sure the value of their advice is visible at every step. That approach works for clients of every age. It just happens to be exactly what the next generation of borrowers is looking for.
