Karen Bennett

Shawbrook completes £2.7m loan despite last-minute difficulties




Shawbrook Bank's commercial mortgages team has teamed up with Charleston Financial to complete a short-term loan with an ambitious deadline.

The lender and its strategic broker partner provided a £2.7m short-term loan refinance for 12 months interest-only at 68% LTV in less than a fortnight to a repeat client.

The deal was completed despite some urgent issues raised during checks by the solicitors. 

Shawbrook were introduced to the deal by Charleston Financial with the bank’s lending manager providing an application in principle less than three hours after the initial enquiry.

Charleston’s client needed to complete the refinance in just 13 business days, but already held more than one loan with Shawbrook. 

This meant the client was entitled to a 0.25% reduction on the arrangement fee as part of Shawbrook’s existing customer discount service.

Shawbrook appointed its valuer partner Appraisers UK to find answers to all outstanding queries. 

Two days before the completion deadline, urgent issues around the security complying with building regulations were raised by the solicitors.

Following further investigation, it was found that a condition remained outstanding on the planning permission, but this was in relation to the now obsolete Code for Sustainable Homes.

Charleston worked closely with Shawbrook during this tricky period in order to contact the building architect at the 11th hour.

They managed to obtain written confirmation that the security was constructed in accordance with building regulations and would comfortably comply with the Code for Sustainable Homes to level 4 standard were it not obsolete. 

“Once again, our short-term loans team has pulled out the stops to achieve the ambitious completion target set by our customer,” said Karen Bennett, managing director of Shawbrook Commercial Mortgages. 

“Despite the last-minute difficulties around building regulations, it was encouraging to see both Shawbrook and Charleston Financial applying good sense and a hands-on approach to achieve this positive customer outcome.” 

James Hardwick, managing director at Charleston Financial, said its client was very pleased with the lending decisions made by Shawbrook during the loan process.

“It was always going to be a challenge to complete in time and Shawbrook didn’t disappoint. 

“Their short-term loans team didn’t allow the building regulations issue to faze them either. 

“We worked in tandem to get to the bottom of the problem, found a pragmatic solution and got the loan completed in time, much to the pleasure of our client.”

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