Property of the Week - Ground Up Development in Poole

This is a really interesting £842,000 ground-up development loan for a property in Poole, Dorset. From enquiry to financing, it took just 11 days to complete. The details:

The developer controls a small but rapidly expanding portfolio and is experienced at the practice of purchase and redevelopment projects, which the Poole project falls under. They have been operating for a number of years and have previous developments within their portfolio, including residential flats and kerbside properties. The plans of the developer were to undertake a heavy development on the current property, to redevelop from a two-story property into three stories with an accompanying rooftop garden.

Images on each left (before) and images on each right (after):

The client took the opportunity to purchase this well positioned plot at short notice, due to the original buyer’s failure to complete. Therefore, speed was important to the developer in order to secure the property fast. The client required a loan amount of £842,000 which would include a proportion of the purchase, as well as all development works at an LTGDV of 57%.

The developer’s plan was to get the works completed and the property on the market for sale within the 12 month loan term, and to remarket the property in the price bracket of £1.25M - £1.5M.

Mint Bridging was approached to provide funding for the purchase and development, with the time to secure funding critical in order to progress. Our underwriters were able to perform all the comprehensive checks required to offer an agreement in principle the following day, with valuations completed within 24 hours. The loan agreement included a first charge on the property and consisted of an LTV of 65%. The loan was completed within three weeks, whereby Mint provided the first drawdown opportunity for the borrower within 11 business days of the initial offer.

Working with the developer, Mint agreed just under 50% of the loan value for day 1 drawdown. Mint’s in-house portfolio managers worked very closely with the developer from the outset of the agreement. This was to progress the finance within a statement of works, to deliver further tranche releases that fitted their 6 month re-development time scale. Further to this, we added a 1 month development contingency (7 months build in total) and applied a further 5 months to the loan, in order to give a comfortable re-sale period for the developer.

With the property now complete, the finished build outcome is a testament to the ambitious timescales and quality to detail that the developer  displayed from the outset of the project.