A developer is using a £1.9m refurbishment bridging loan from Aspen to convert a Grade I listed office building in Bath town centre into five residential apartments.
Under the bridging loan, an initial advance of £800k, representing 80% LTV, refinances an existing £550,000 purchase facility and gives the borrower £250,000 to begin the substantial works. The remaining £1.1m is available through staged development drawdowns, and the completed scheme is expected to have a GDV of about £2.7m.
The borrower bought the building off-market in 2025. It occupies a corner plot in Bath town centre and is in poor condition, and the scheme will convert it into five two-bedroom apartments, each with dual aspects.
Aspen completed the case in six weeks, with its in-house development monitoring team involved from the outset. The lender will visit the site within 48 hours of the next drawdown request and release funds within 72 hours. Because Aspen has already seen the scheme, it knows the borrower’s ambitions and the project timescales, and the borrower avoids the cost of appointing a third-party monitoring surveyor.
The bridging loan carries a flat rate of 0.79% per month over 18 months. The developer plans to keep the completed apartments as income-producing assets, adding them to an existing investment portfolio, and will exit via refinance.
Laura Randall, senior underwriter at Aspen, handled the application from start to finish, in line with the lender’s one-person-per-case Customer Service Commitment.
“The project is being undertaken by a highly experienced developer who has completed 25 projects realising GDVs of over £20 million during the last 12 months. As such, they completely understand the benefits of our unique in-house development monitoring team, which brings more speed, reduced costs and much-needed continuity into every project,” she said.
Please visit:
Our Sponsor
