Commercial Bridge Loans

Rapid Loans For Commercial Properties

Borrow £125,000 to £15,000,000 from Rapid Bridging in as little as 48 hours. We arrange commercial bridge loans for clients to buy, renovate and develop property and to raise funds against the equity they have accumulated in non-residential property or land. 

Rapid Bridging has fantastic success arranging commercial bridging finance for our clients. For more information or to start the process today, get in touch with our team now.

What Are Commercial Bridging Loans?

Commercial bridging loans are a short term secured loan where the security offered by a borrower is either commercial or semi-commercial premises.

Bridging lenders offer a far more adaptable and flexible approach to borrowers than commercial and semi-commercial mortgage providers. You can borrow over as little as 30 days right up to 36 months with interest charged daily.

And unlike when applying for commercial and semi-commercial mortgages where it can take up to 3 months to receive funding, we aim to provide our borrowers with the finance they need in as little as 48 hours, but some commercial bridge loans can take 10 days to agree.

How Much Can I Borrow With A Commercial Bridge Loan?

The amount of money you can borrow with a commercial bridging loan depends on what you need the money for.

If you simply wish to purchase property which needs little or nothing doing to it, lender will fund up to 70% of the purchase price of the property. For example, if you wished to purchase a retail unit worth £250,000, you’d need to have a deposit of 30% or £75,000.

If you wish to purchase property/land and carry out more substantial works on it, lenders will often advance money for the purchase of the property/land as well as construction and associated costs.

Please give us a call on 0208 150 7528 or email us at info@rapidbridging.com to tell us about your project.

Repaying Commercial Bridging Loans

The way you repay a commercial bridging loan is very different to the way you repay a commercial mortgage.

With standard commercial mortgages on offer from traditional lenders, you make a monthly repayment towards the capital (the amount of money you borrowed in the first place) and the interest (your lender’s charge on the capital they advanced you). And, with commercial mortgages, interest rate charges are given annually.

With commercial bridging loans, interest rate charges are expressed monthly.

For example, this means that our current lowest monthly rate of 0.39% is equivalent to an annual interest rate of 4.68%

With commercial bridge loans, you don’t make monthly payments on the capital – instead, you repay it all in one go at the very end of the loan.

You can choose to make monthly interest repayments but you don’t have to. You can roll up all of the interest charges and repay them together with your capital at the end of the loan (although this is slightly more expensive than paying monthly).

You can also choose the retained interest option. This is like rolled up interest but you’re able to borrow against the rolled up interest if you need it. This is the most expensive option as you are charged interest again on the capital and the rolled up interest – please speak with one of our advisors.

When applying for any commercial bridge loan, your lender will want to know what your exit strategy is – this is how you propose to repay them.

For example, if you purchase commercial property with a view to renovating it and trading from those premises, the standard exit strategy would be to repay the loan from the proceeds you receive from a standard owner-occupier commercial mortgage.

Alternatively, your exit route might be:

• arranging a commercial buy-to-let loan if you wanted other businesses to lease space from you or
• selling the property for a profit once you’d added value to it with the renovation work.

If you intend to raise money with a commercial bridging loan not to buy property but to provide funding for another reason, a typical exit strategy might be:

• the repayment of a late and overdue invoice from a client, 
• proceeds from an inheritance, or, 
• if you purchase machinery or equipment for use in your company, repayment through the arrangement of standard asset-based finance.

Requirements for Commercial Bridging Loans?

For any commercial bridging finance, you will need to meet specific lender requirements before the loan can be granted. Rapid Bridging work with an experienced pool of lenders with fantastic appetite; you will need to provide one of the following as acceptable security for commercial bridge loans. 

• Commercial property – including but not limited to business parks, care homes, factories, guest houses, hotels, industrial units, offices, professional practises, pubs and bars, restaurants, a retail unit, places of worship, and warehouses you own
• Mixed-use property – use a semi-commercial bridging loan for property where less than 40% of available space is used for commercial purposes
• Unmortgageable property – commercial or mixed-use property whose condition is so poor that no standard mortgage could be secured on it (including no bathroom, no kitchen, derelict, and non-standard builds)
• Greenfield/brownfield land (with or without planning permission) – for commercial, industrial, or trading estates
• Auction property – fund the deposit or outright purchase (including auction fees) of commercial and semi-commercial property you purchase at auction

What If I Have A Poor Credit History?

Rapid Bridiging’s lenders are able to lend to those applicants that have a poor credit history, including those with arrears, bankruptcies, CCJs, defaults, IVAs, response orders, statutory demands, winding up orders and more. 

In these cases, lenders will often require borrowers to provide a wider range of exit strategies because of the concern that they will be unable to obtain the finance necessary to repay the loan. Please do not be put off from applying – we have years of experience helping clients with poor credit ratings find the funding they need.