Bridging finance
Auction purchases, chain breaks and refinance, arranged to 80% of value. Short-term money that turns up when it is supposed to.
When a bridge is the right tool
A bridge is short-term money secured on property, used when timing matters more than price. It buys the weeks a term lender cannot work to, and it is repaid from a defined event rather than out of income over twenty-five years.
Three situations account for most of what crosses the desk:
- Auction. You exchanged on the fall of the hammer and completion is a fixed date, typically twenty-eight days. A term application will not make it.
- Chain break. A purchase you want is about to be lost because a sale beneath you has stalled. A bridge separates the two so one does not take down the other.
- Refinance. An existing facility is expiring, or you need to release equity quickly against something you already own.
What it can be secured against
- Residential houses and flats
- Conversions and permitted development stock
- Mixed-use and commercial property
- Land, with or without planning
- Portfolios held across multiple titles
The number that actually matters
Bridging is quoted at a monthly rate, which makes comparison harder than it first looks. The real cost of a bridge is the rate plus the arrangement fee, plus the exit fee where there is one, plus valuation and legal costs — multiplied by how long you actually hold it, which is rarely the term you first asked for.
We would rather show you the total cost of two or three routes than the cheapest headline rate. Sometimes the more expensive bridge is the cheap one, because it completes on the date it said it would and the alternative was losing a deposit.
Speed, honestly
You will have a considered answer and options the same working day. Completion is a separate question: it turns on the valuation, the title, and how quickly the solicitors on both sides move. What we can do at the outset is tell you whether your deadline is realistic — and say so plainly if it is not.
The exit
No lender will seriously look at a bridge without a credible way out of it. In practice that means a sale on the open market, a refinance onto a term facility, or the sale of another asset. If the exit depends on works being finished first, refurbishment finance or development finance may be the better structure from the start.