Heron Financial Launches the Mortgage Client Sentiment Index
The Mortgage Client Sentiment Index is a new quarterly report from Heron Financial that analyses real client conversations, rather than surveys or polling, to show what UK mortgage borrowers are actually asking, worrying about and reacting to. The first edition covers Q2 2026 (April to June), drawing on 5,892 mortgage-relevant conversations out of 28,621 client calls handled by Heron advisers in the period. The full report is free to download below.
Most market data tracks what happened to prices, rates and lending volumes. This index tracks something adjacent to that: what borrowers were actually saying while those numbers moved. The two are not the same thing, and the gap between them is, in places, the most interesting part of the report.
What the Index found in Q2 2026
A few headline findings from the first edition:
- Negative sentiment stayed low all quarter, at 2.1% overall. Almost every client conversation Heron analysed was positive or neutral. May was the pressure point, with negative sentiment rising to 3.0%, before falling to 1.4% in June, the calmest month of the quarter.
- The “neutral” bucket, not the negative one, was the real story. Positive sentiment barely moved across the quarter, holding above 50% every month. What grew steadily, month on month, was the share of conversations that were neutral: engaged, informed, but undecided. By June, that accounted for close to half of all conversations analysed.
- Borrowers ignored the macro story driving their own rates. An energy shock was the dominant factor behind Bank of England rate decisions through Q2, yet global conflict appeared in just 0.9% of client conversations and inflation in only 1.0%. Employment and income confidence, by contrast, was the most common real-world theme in the data (15.8% of conversations) and the fastest growing.
- Clarity, not price, drove confidence. In conversations Heron classified as positive, having a clear next step or plan was present in 89.9% of them, the single strongest driver in the data. Securing a rate, by comparison, appeared in 51.8%.
- Negative sentiment was almost never about the deal itself. 84.8% of negative conversations involved a gap in visibility (not knowing what was happening next), and 75.2% involved waiting on a lender or solicitor. In most of these cases, the application was progressing normally. What was missing was confirmation that it was.
- First-time buyers ended the quarter carrying more risk than they started it with. Their share of purchase activity rose from 44.8% in April to 52.1% in June, alongside the highest average loan-to-value of the quarter (80.1%). Across Q2, the average first-time buyer put down £71,025 and borrowed at 81.4% LTV.
A quarter borrowers spent calculating, not shopping
“The quarter borrowers stopped shopping for rates” is how the report’s editor’s summary frames Q2. Clients stayed active and kept making decisions, but wanted more certainty before committing to any of them.
Francel Bangayan, Marketing Manager at Heron Financial, who oversaw the report, put it this way:
“The Q2 first-time buyer put down £71,025 and borrowed at 81.4%. That is a deposit large enough to take years to assemble, on a loan-to-value that leaves little room if prices move. The takeaway: the quarter ended with more borrowers entering the market at higher LTVs than it started with.”
On the gap between the macro story and what borrowers actually raised in conversation:
“Borrowers were not processing the macro picture as a macro picture. They were processing it as their own income, their own deposit and their own completion date.”
Why Heron built this
Most mortgage market commentary is built from prices, rates and lending volumes; useful, but one step removed from the people the numbers describe. The Sentiment Index takes a different starting point: real, anonymised client conversations, analysed for sentiment and recurring themes using Heron’s integrated AI platform, then aggregated into a quarterly report.
That approach reports what clients actually raised themselves, not what a survey prompted them to answer. It picks up things a satisfaction score would miss entirely, like the fact that a five-year fix and a two-year fix can carry the same rate but very different emotional weight depending on who is signing for it, or that the biggest driver of a bad conversation in Q2 was rarely the mortgage itself, but the silence between updates on it.
Download the full report
The full Q2 2026 Mortgage Client Sentiment Index runs to 11 sections, covering monthly sentiment trends, the themes borrowers raised most, what drove confidence, what drove frustration, first-time buyer and product data, and a look ahead at six things Heron is watching in Q3.
About the Index
Source data. 28,621 client calls handled by Heron Financial advisers between 1 April and 30 June 2026 were reviewed. After removing short, inconclusive or low-signal interactions, 5,892 mortgage-relevant conversations remained for analysis.
Method. Conversations were analysed using Heron Financial’s integrated AI platform, which classifies each conversation’s overall sentiment as positive, neutral or negative and identifies recurring themes. All outputs are anonymised and aggregated; no client or property is identifiable in the report.
Scope. The Index reflects the experience of Heron Financial’s own clients over the quarter. It is not a statistically representative sample of the UK mortgage market as a whole, and average purchase prices and loan sizes in the report sit above national averages, reflecting the mix of clients Heron advised in the period.
Next edition. Q3 2026 publishes in October.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Heron Mortgage Client Sentiment Index?
It is a quarterly report from Heron Financial that analyses real, anonymised client conversations to show what UK mortgage borrowers are asking, worrying about and reacting to. The first edition covers Q2 2026 (April to June) and is drawn from 5,892 mortgage-relevant conversations.
How is this different from other UK mortgage market data?
Most mortgage market reporting tracks prices, rates and lending volumes. The Sentiment Index instead analyses the language and themes inside real client conversations, so it reports what borrowers actually raised themselves rather than what a survey or poll asked them about.
Where does the data come from?
From 28,621 client calls handled by Heron Financial advisers between April and June 2026, filtered down to 5,892 conversations with enough usable content for sentiment analysis. Conversations were analysed using Heron Financial's integrated AI platform.
Is the report representative of the whole UK mortgage market?
No. It reflects the experience of Heron Financial's own clients over the quarter, not a statistically representative sample of the UK market. Average purchase prices and loan sizes in the report sit above national averages, reflecting Heron's client mix during the period.
What did the Q2 2026 report find?
Overall sentiment stayed strongly positive or neutral (97.9%) across the quarter. The clearest finding was that negative sentiment was rarely about the mortgage deal itself: 84.8% of negative conversations involved a gap in visibility over what was happening next. First-time buyers also ended the quarter taking on the highest loan-to-values, at an average of 81.4%.
Is the full report free to download?
Yes. The full Q2 2026 report is free to download from this page, with no sign-up required.
When does the next edition publish?
The Q3 2026 edition of the Mortgage Client Sentiment Index publishes in October 2026.
Disclaimer
This article and the accompanying report are provided for general information and media purposes only, based on anonymised, aggregated analysis of client interactions with Heron Financial during Q2 2026. All figures reflect historic outcomes for Heron Financial clients during the period and are not indicative of the rates, terms or lending decisions available to any individual. Mortgage availability and pricing depend on individual circumstances, lender criteria and market conditions, all of which change. Nothing in this report constitutes financial advice, a recommendation, or an invitation to enter into any mortgage contract.
Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.
A note on client data and privacy
Every conversation included in this analysis is anonymised and aggregated before it is reviewed. No client name, property address or identifying detail is retained in the report, and no individual client can be identified from any figure or finding published.
If you are a Heron Financial client and would prefer your conversations are not included in this or future analysis, contact us at info@heronfinancial.co.uk and we will exclude your data going forward. This will not affect your existing mortgage, protection cover or the service you receive from your adviser in any way.