Charterbank Capital registers for Bridging Loan Directory

By Joanne Atkin 9th November 2020

As a niche, short-term lender Charterbank Capital has decided to rejoin Bridging Loan Directory to raise its profile among brokers.

Charterbank specialises in the smaller end of the market and provides short-term loans from £26,000 to £500,000 to property investors, developers and builders.

A large part of Charterbank’s business is funding small developments, typically one to five units, which can be new build, conversion, refurbishment or mixed use.

It will also finance land with or without planning permission – farm land – properties bought at auction and traditional bridging but will consider any business purpose as long as it is secured against property or land.

Charterbank does not limit itself to experienced borrowers, it will happily lend to people who are trying their hand at property development for the first time.

Inexperienced people can drift over time and over budget, says Tom Branson, pictured, director at Charterbank Capital, so it is prepared for that and will help clients ensure their projects get over the line.

Branson says business has remained good this year despite Covid-19. He comments: “We were prepared for customers encountering difficulties in repaying on time and built that into our mindset but our clients have good products and have been able to sell or refinance as planned.

We look at future values with caution, we have to be prudent, but generally our customers are adding value anyway.

Lending is very much as normal. There is always a steady stream of enquires and new cases coming in from brokers, however, most at the moment open with an initial question as to whether we are ‘lending as normal’, presumably because some lenders have stopped or paused lending for the moment or are being very selective.”

Branson admits that Charterbank is not the cheapest and therefore often not the first point of call for brokers.

Much of its business comes from reputation and recommendation and where the customer or broker has been let down or is struggling to find a lender for a variety of reasons.

Charterbank also receives a good deal of repeat business as Branson explains: “We are very good at what we do.

Once people have used us they tend to come back. We are very fast, very attentive and very reliable. Once we have said yes, we mean yes.

We try to get under the skin of a case very early on and push it and pull it to see where it could go wrong before we even start the legal process.

That saves a lot of time and also saves the customer money. When we go to offer stage we expect that loan to go out in due course, we don’t expect the lawyers to uncover something that means we can’t lend.”

Charterbank is based in Exeter and its policy is to meet every borrower personally and carry out its own site inspection/valuation before releasing any funds.

Much of its business is therefore in the South West, South and Midlands but it does have a few clients in the North.

Joanne Atkin

Joanne Atkin is an award winning, freelance journalist and has written for both trade and consumer press. She is the former Editor of Mortgage Finance Gazette, What Mortgage and The Money Pages and has previously worked for a major lender.