Apply for a Bridging Loan
Fluent Bridging is a loans broker in the UK. We look through our extensive panel of lenders to offer you the best loan options tailored to your personal needs.
What is a Bridging Loan?
A bridging loan is short-term borrowing, usually taken out for no more than 12 months. Its main purpose is to ‘bridge’ a financial gap between a purchase and a sale of your properties, where funds are needed quickly. Interest accrues monthly (often referred to as ‘rolled’ or ‘retained’) and the entire loan amount is repaid when the funds become available from sale of property or refinance.
What are Bridging Loans for?
Chainbreak (Buy a new home before yours sells)
Property Investment (Auction, BTL, etc.)
Non-Mortgageable Properties
Home Improvements
Repay Existing Mortgage
Rebridging
Who We Work With
At Fluent Money®, we work with a range of trusted providers to bring you the best possible options to suit your needs.
Why Choose Bridging Loans?
Chainbreak for a New Home
You want to buy a new house and yours is put on the market. While the current residence is jumping through its usual hoops, you find your dream home (Closer to the family or in a coveted location). All cash sits in equity, money is needed fast, and your old home will not sell in time.
We will source a loan for you for the required amount. You will have 12 months to complete the sale of your property and repay the loan without monthly payments. Interest simply accrues daily until it gets repaid. So, if your old house then sells in 43 days, you’ll only have to pay 43 days interest plus the associated fees. The majority of your lenders do not charge any fees for early repayment ensuring you have maximum control and flexibility over repayment.
Property Investment
Auction, Buy-to-Let, Not Mortgageable
After the property is bought at an Auction you can have 14 or 28 days for the purchase to complete. Typically, a Buy-To-Let Mortgage is required longer term, but these can take a week or even months to arrange. In addition, the property may not yet be ‘mortgageable’ due to its current state of repair. A Bridging loan can be sourced in that timeframe.
If you are interested in securing a Buy-to-Let property it is possible to arrange a loan quickly, often to meet very short timescales. This allows you plenty of time to arrange the longer term finance which then effectively replaces and repays your Bridging Loan as soon as it’s ready.
As we’ve already highlighted, if you want to purchase an unusual property or one that is derelict, Bridging loans can be used to buy properties that are not mortgageable. No kitchen, no bathroom or a simple shell. The property undergoes renovations and is then repaid using a traditional mortgage or even sold or ‘flipped’ to repay the Bridge.
Mortgage Payment
If you can no longer afford your mortgage, and you put the house up on the market, using a Bridging Loan could repay your Mortgage Lender and allow you the time to market the property at fair market value and achieve the true value around the asking price, this can also avoid a negative impact on your credit history.
Rebridging
Your existing Bridging loan comes to an end and you can’t pay the loan back on time. For example, if someone does works on the house and those take longer than expected. We can explore options with you to see if there is the possibility of re-bridging to another lender. This then extends the loan term giving you more time to repay.
Debt Consolidation
If you find yourself under financial pressure with rising monthly commitments, we could help repay loans and credit cards before you start missing payments to reduce the outgoings, while your house is on the market or while you are waiting on other funds such as an inheritance to become available.
Simple Cash Flow
You are working or retired and need some cash to keep your day-to-day living standards while you await the sale of a property.
Any Legal Purpose
Not just juggling houses. Gifts, school fees, building from the ground up, land, cash injection, discharge a Bankruptcy, providing the purpose is legal and we have a property or properties to secure against, coupled with a credible exit (repayment) strategy. There are many uses of a Bridging Loan.
How Does it Work?
- Fill out the “Get Quote” form and one of our friendly, experienced, advisors will call you.
- Tell us about your loan purpose, exit plan and amount of existing equity.
- We will review options, explain them in detail and compare an extensive panel of lenders to provide you with options.
- If you are happy with our solution, we will move on to the application stage.
- Please note that our advice is without obligation and there are no upfront broker/finder fees.
- We do a full fact find so we know in great detail your needs and get a decision in principle from the lender.
- Documents are then exchanged, checked, signed and re-checked before being sent to the lender.
- You will benefit from your own dedicated Case Manager who will work with lenders, solicitors and valuers to move you quickly and efficiently towards a Mortgage Offer being issued.
- Once the legal work and any outstanding underwriting has been completed then funds can be released.
Considerations
Exit Strategy: How will you pay it back? Typical loan term is 12 months, so you need to make sure that the exit strategy is solid. Examples: Your property sells, re-mortgage, equity release or inheritance.
Interest Rates: Loan to Value (LTV) affects your interest rates which can be much lower under 55% loan-to-value. Compared to a mortgage – the interest rates are comparatively higher than a traditional mortgage. If less expensive options are available, we will make that clear at the outset. If Bridging is the only option, we work hard to minimise any costs to you and also keep your monthly interest as low as possible.
FAQs
Yes and no. As mentioned above, the interest rates are typically higher than a long-term mortgage. However, if you are using the loan for the right purpose it doesn’t have to be expensive.
An example can be a customer taking out a £100k loan to renovate a property and pay all applicable taxes on it, which they then sell for £400k without investing any of their money. Even with high interest rates the profit still justifies the loan.
In summary, a Bridging Loan is a short-term lending vehicle designed to be used when there are no more cost effective solutions, we have vast experience in sourcing the cheapest and most flexible deals in the market.
Good idea: It allows you fast access to funds when required, and flexibility, as a short-term solution to your particular problem. Properties that are not mortgageable or the need to downsize are just a couple of examples.
Not a good idea: If there are other lending solutions that are available to you such as a residential mortgage, Buy-To-Let Mortgage or a secured loan, then we will highlight this at the very start of your enquiry with us, we are regulated by the FCA and pride ourselves on providing the very best level of advice, all calls maybe recorded and we document any advice that we give to you.
At Fluent Money, we offer bridging loans for both residential and commercial purchases. We can also advise on ground-up development finance.
Bridging finance options are conditional upon the lender and circumstances. Sometimes Bridging Loans can be arranged in a matter of days, other more complex transactions can be 6-8 weeks, our advisors will always try to manage your expectations before you commit to a Bridging Loan.
Bridging is a short-term loan where you need to make sure you are on track with paying it back. Interest rates are more expensive compared to mortgages and can get even more so if you don’t pay back on time. Some lenders can start charging fees at the end of the loan term.
Like any other loan secured on property your home is at risk if you do not keep up repayments on it.
Regulated: Used for personal purposes secured by your private home.
Non-regulated: Investment purposes like Buy-to-let or building a house to then sell on (known as a flip).
With some lenders, yes. As with any finance application, taking out a Bridging Loan affects an individual’s credit file and could impact the ability to gain finance in the future, your dedicated adviser will be on hand to explain in great detail how this would work for each applicant
You are in safe hands with Fluent, as well as our specialist Bridging Loan advisers we also have Mortgage Advisors in house so we can provide a rounded view and give you personal advice on all aspects of the Mortgage/Bridging Loan process.
Why choose Fluent Money®?
We’re 5 star TrustPilot rated
Find out what our customers say about us
We’re friendly UK-based loan experts
You’ll be assigned a dedicated case manager to help deal with your application from beginning to end
We’ll keep you in the picture
You can check your application and loan progress 24/7 with our industry-leading smartphone app
We present you with options, not problems
Our many years’ experience means our friendly experts know how to find the right loan for you
Why our customers recommend Fluent Money®
We’re one of the UK’s favourite finance brokers. Don’t believe us? See what our customers have to say:
Want to find out more?
Speak to our dedicating bridging loans team who will be able to help with any questions you may have.