The specialist bank was approached by its broker partner Sterling Knight on behalf of the client, who wanted to purchase the flats in order to split them into leaseholds and either refinance them for buy-to-let purposes or sell them.

Shawbrook agreed to provide the loan on its STL1 product, allowing the borrower to purchase the flats at a discounted ‘block’ basis, all without tying up their assets.

Once the flats were split into leaseholds, the borrower sold a portion of the stock (at a refinance value of £120,000 each), and has refinanced the other flats, two of them on Shawbrook’s RI0.1 product.

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“We were delighted to assist our longstanding repeat borrowing client with the purchase of this property, which allowed them to split the title on to long leaseholds and refinance several of the flats in Shawbrook’s specialist BTL term finance,” said Paul Steel, director at Sterling Knight.

Sarah Woolf, senior development manager at Shawbrook Commercial Mortgages (pictured above), added: “Working closely with Sterling Knight, we’re delighted that we were able to help an existing customer with their long-term property investment strategy.

“The original bridge-to-let loan helped the client to free up capital and the smooth transition from STL to term meant minimal cost and time incurred.”