Secured Lending & Finance

The Firm regularly acts in the sphere of secured lending, particularly for short term finance transactions. The Firm is well known for its proactive and pragmatic approach to such transactions, recognising that bridging lending requires swift and decisive action. We act as de facto “in house” lawyers for a number of private bridging lenders, ensuring a swift and smooth process. Brokers can confidently predict completion timeframes to their borrower clients when a loan offer is made by one of our bridging lender clients, knowing that the Firm will be handling the transaction.

Recent examples of bridging loan transactions that we have acted on include:

• a £585,000 loan to a property developer to enable it to complete the purchase of a property under an option agreement, before planning permission had been granted, to avoid the borrower losing their £85,000 deposit; 

• a £680,000 loan to refinance land with planning to refinance an existing facility, pending the sale of the site to a developer;

• a £2,255,000 loan to refinance an existing loan secured against a prime country house and 130 acres of farmland, completed in time to save the borrowers a considerable penalty charge;

• a £700,000 loan to complete the purchase by an overseas investor of a home in the countryside;

• a £272,000 facility arranged the day before contractual completion for the acquisition of a residential land in place of a mainstream commercial lender that was not able to release funds in time;

• a £1,334,000 facility completed in less than 24 hours to complete the acquisition of a property to be converted into a children's nursery, with only 1 working day of the notice to complete period remaining, thus saving the borrower's £160,000 deposit;

• a £562,000 facility to a borrower who had exchanged to purchase an off-plan flat but could not obtain high street finance at the time of completion owing to credit issues;

• a £2,350,000 facility required to refinance an existing loan, secured by a first charge against commercial premises, which was completed within 4 days, thus allowing the borrower to avoid paying significant penalties chargeable under its previous facility;

• a £767,000 facility secured by first charges against three residential investment properties to enable a developer to complete its works to a residential development site;

• a £778,000 facility secured by a first charge against a new long leasehold title to enable the completion of the purchase of a hotel;

• a £1,420,000 facility secured by a first charge over agricultural land to enable the borrower to purchase the land and develop four residential dwellings on it, which included the preparation of a joint venture agreement between the lender and borrower.