Case Study: Short term loan for BTL portfolio addition

By Bridging Loan Directory 7th April 2016

Completion on the Bank’s STL1 product, for £203,400 on 12 months interest only.

Shawbrook is pleased to report the completion of a short term loan at 55% LTV, for a client of Strategic Partner ‘Searchlight Finance’. The purpose of the loan was to raise funds for the purchase of another investment property, with the client having very recently transferred ownership of a buy-to-let (BTL) property from their individual name to a limited company via a special purpose vehicle (SPV).

Shawbrook has completed on loans for a number of clients in a similar position, establishing an internal support framework which can process SPV transactions as efficiently as possible. In this case, the broker’s client already had another loan with Shawbrook, enabling them to benefit from the Existing Customer Discount and expediting the application process for all parties.

The client was initially unable to provide the shareholding structure of the new SPV to the Bank, because they were awaiting the appropriate security codes from Companies House in order to update their annual return documents. As Searchlight’s client was known to the Bank, Shawbrook was able to take a pragmatic view and issue the IMO without this information, making it a pre-completion requirement instead.

There were some initial discrepancies concerning the property title plan, whereby the documentation provided seemed to indicate the footprint of buildings previously on site and not forming the boundaries of the newly built development. This created difficulties for our legal partners at Pure Law in terms of finalising a definitive boundary plan, but these were overcome by the efforts of both the Shawbrook lending teams and Searchlight Finance.

With open communication channels ensuring all outstanding information was shared as needed, the Shawbrook lending teams were able to move to completion to the satisfaction of the client.

The broker, Simon Allen from Searchlight Finance, commented:

“My client was pleased with the outcome of their application process with Shawbrook and, as a repeat customer, is open to seeking finance from Shawbrook again in the future.

“From a broker’s standpoint, the interaction with Shawbrook lending teams was as Searchlight Finance has come to expect – expert, pragmatic and always able to take an informed view throughout the lending process.”