Meir Peer, a bridging specialist at Roma Finance, has lifted the lid on the largest case dealt with by the business, with the finance lender providing a loan of £1.32 million.
Mr Peer has told how the customer had already purchased an industrial building near Manchester city centre and had started converting the building. As work continued on the 26 luxury apartments it became clear that the requisite money needed for the project wasn’t available.
At this crucial stage of the development, time was of the essence. And Roma Finance weren’t backwards in coming forwards and the deal was done within just 15 days.
That’s when Roma Finance stepped in to lend the necessary funds to pay off the incumbent lender and complete the top floor comprising six duplex flats.
Roma met with the customer to dig into the detail of the transaction and visited the building which is in an up and coming part of the city with easy access to the centre and has plenty of amenities. This indicated that the flats would be very desirable for buyers working in Manchester – meaning future sales would not be an issue at all.
The deal was expedited so efficiently for a number of reasons. The customer is known to be a developer brimming with experience and has completed a number of successful residential and commercial schemes; these have included leisure complexes, spas and gyms.
On completion it is estimated the whole site would be worth in excess of £4 million. The exit to the loan was already planned for with the quick sale of a number of the flats as soon as they were renovated.
With these factors having been given due consideration, Roma advanced the £1.32 million bridging loan in a little over two weeks – and this despite the case being higher than Roma’s maximum loan size of £1 million. It was felt that the viability of the case and the experience of the customer meant that it was a case they could lend on. Mr Peer explained:
“This was a case where the borrower spotted a tremendous opportunity in a desirable part of Manchester and beat other developers to buy the building and start to renovate it. The loan required was more than our stated criteria, but every case has to be judged on its own merits, and in this situation, we decided it was a case worth lending on, with a customer who had delivered quality projects in the past.
“We managed to provide the funds in just fifteen days using our new and highly streamlined fast track service which is exactly what the customer wanted and he was able to continue seamlessly with the renovations after we paid off his current borrowings.”
The customer passed on his gratitude, saying:
“Thank you for doing the deal and for doing it in the time frame you said you would. I am very grateful and I look forward to doing many more deals in the future.”