Black & White Bridging has suggested that the bridging finance market should stop “peddling the idea” that bridging is all about speed.

The bridging lender said the sector is doing itself no favours by suggesting that loans are there to provide “immediate” funding, and warned of the risk of the sector giving brokers unrealistic expectations.

This comes as Black & White Bridging has just completed a case for a broker and his client in eight days.

Introduced by Magnus Duke Dadzie of ABCD Capital Funding & Finance, the case request was for 75% LTV funding on a leasehold flat, but with the stipulation that the deal had to complete within 10 days.

With the initial underwriting concluded, the case was in danger of being held up because the original valuer had been unable to undertake the instruction. A second valuer had to be instructed and the new valuation was delivered the following day, with the case completed in eight working days.

“This case was completed well within the client’s stipulated timeframe of 10 working days and we have a delighted customer and a happy broker,” commented Black & White commercial director, Damien Druce.

“My definition of a ‘fast’ bridging loan is one that meets or exceeds the client’s expectations regardless of time taken and I hope that by illustrating this case, it might go a little way to balance stories of highlighted cases that infer that bridging deals are done in what seems the time it takes to make a cup of coffee. In reality, they are few and far between.”

Druce added: “In our case, completion in eight days, even with the added time handicap of a misfiring first valuer, is a fast completion in the real world, not because it took ‘X’ number of hours from end to end, but because we produced what was needed within the customer’s parameters.

“The sector does itself no favours by peddling the idea that bridging loans provide ‘immediate’ funding. If we continue to overpromise by trumpeting about the few cases where the stars align and everything falls right into place, we are just setting ourselves up for brokers and their clients to have overly unrealistic expectations about what we can offer.”

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