Mortgage Advice Bureau cut its full-year profit forecast, citing a stalled housing market recovery and delays at its Fluent division.
The mortgage broker said it now expects adjusted pre-tax profit of around £38m for 2026, well below the £43.4m analysts had been forecasting.
First-half profit was slightly ahead of a recent update, at about £14.8m, but the company warned that the pick-up in home-buying activity widely expected at the start of the year had failed to materialise.
The company is echoing the UK’s housebuilders that have recently warned of tepid housing market conditions.
It said conditions had become more challenging over the summer, with global developments adding to uncertainty over inflation and interest rates, and that it did not expect a meaningful recovery in purchase activity in the near term.
UK purchase transactions fell 3% in the first seven months of the year, while mortgage approvals for house purchases dropped 15% year-on-year in July. The market remains dominated by refinancing, skewed towards lower-value product transfers as stretched affordability limits remortgaging.
The bulk of the downgrade came from Fluent, the group’s specialist lending arm, where an expected step-up in new business has been delayed. A significant increase in contracted lead flows has not yet launched, leaving Fluent to absorb pilot costs ahead of the associated revenue and cutting its expected profit contribution by around £5m.