Deadline met with a quick bridge on land with residential planning

Situation

We are seeing a lot of land with planning cases at the moment, probably due to the Local Plans been drawn up by Local Planning Authorities and the Governments targets for more housing along with the policy changes and access to publicly owned land.

This 4-acre piece of land located near Bristol had planning to build 157 homes, 56% of which would be affordable housing, using all of the latest energy efficiency available and proving a range of owned, rental and affordable modern homes.

The borrower was in the process of securing development finance, and had an agreement in principle in place, however, this was a couple of months away and there was a deadline to complete on the purchase from the local authority.

It was at this point the Broker came to us asking for a short 3 month term bridging loan.

Solution

Being well versed in quick turnarounds, we knew we could deliver in the timescales needed.

Once the borrower had provided us with copies of the planning, an extensive investment paper for the development and a CV with their range of development experience on a number of sites, we were confident in the borrower’s ability to secure development finance within this timescale.

Result

We offered a 50% LTV and Hope Capital completed the deal after just 4 days from the initial enquiry.

As sometimes happens, the borrower needed to extend the term of the loan by 2 weeks. As the borrower made us aware of this in plenty of time and provided us with a full update from their broker and solicitor on the progress of the refinance to development finance, we had little issue in allowing the extension at the same rate as per the current agreement. Once the 2 week extension was over the borrower redeemed as planned and has started the development on the site.