New lender launches 0.95% bridging products

A new bridging lender in the market has announced that its bridging rates will now start from 0.95 per cent.

Sterling Property Finance, which is still in its soft launch phase, has been trading now for four months. The lender lowered its rates from 1.15 per cent to 0.9 per cent off the back of listening to its introducing brokers since entering the market.

The new 0.95 per cent rates apply to its vanilla bridging products on first charge non-main residential properties. The new rate will be applicable to most applications, unless the credit score doesn’t fit.

Within three hours of announcing the change in its bridging rates, the lender has received six applications, all of them going through to the DIP stage.

Sterling facilitates funding for first and second charge bridging, mezzanine finance and development funding; the latter has made up 65 to 70 per cent of the lender’s loan book to date.

In regards to the development finance side of the business, it typically lends up to 65 per cent GDV for deals.

Sterling is a flexible entity and to that extent does not have a rigid set of criteria. It looks at each case individually and will take commercial views on application when discussing them internally with its five-strong credit committee.

James Gibbs, Business Development Manager, told B&C: “In terms of geographical reach, we started off the proposition within the M25, however the first loan we drew down on was actually in Manchester.”

Sterling has a single financial backer and has a total loan capital of £25 million. It has a financial arrangement which means the lender can top this amount up, increasing flexibility and letting it offer larger loan sizes.

On its launch, Sterling’s maximum loan size was £350,000; this has now been increased to £500,000.

Bridging & Commercial — https://bridgingandcommercial.co.uk/new-lender-launches-0-95-bridging-products