West One Loans has successfully completed a £7.8m large, complex, commercial bridging loan to finance the redevelopment of a hotel in Suffolk.

The borrower, a family-run limited company with experience in property and commercial investment, needed £6m to refurbish the hotel and planned to secure against a large multi-unit commercial facility in London.

This commercial premises had been owned by the family for nearly 20 years across four titles. The site was up for sale and this was in negotiation at the time of application for the hotel finance.

However, the slow speed of the sale created a cash flow issue for financing the hotel development works, and West One highlighted that there was further complexity as the borrower was a limited company that was owned by a parent company, whose majority shares were in trust.

This added legal complications that the West One underwriters had to navigate. The finance was taken over a 24-month term to allow additional time for the negotiations and legal due diligence for selling a site of this scale.

The introducing broker, Scott West from City Finance Brokers, commented: “There are often complications when dealing with large commercial premises – particularly when involving a trust.

“West One was immediately able to see the commercial strengths to the case and take a pragmatic view. They moved swiftly to enable completion within four weeks from instruction, allowing the client to commence refurbishment works considerably sooner than freeing up equity from elsewhere.”

West One sales director, bridging, Nick Jones, added: “This is a great example of how clear communication from the outset, between broker and lender, allowed us to tailor a facility over a complex package to meet the needs of the borrower.

“The main challenge for the client was managing cashflow across various business interests in multiple industries, our short-term facility eased this problem whilst waiting for other elements to fall into place.”

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