The Lady magazine recently secured a £7.4m bridging loan to redevelop its London headquarters.
The magazine was founded in 1885 and is read by royalty and wealthy individuals looking to recruit nannies, butlers and other domestic staff. Its headquarters are a historic six-storey London building.
The leading shareholder in the magazine, Ben Budworth, decided that the company did not need the ground floor and basement of the building. These floors could instead generate income from retail units and restaurants.
To enable this change of use required a considerable sum of money for redevelopment and refurbishment work. The cost was more than £7m and Budworth needed a bridging loan to finance the work. A bridging finance lender was approached and, because the redevelopment made financial sense, a £7.4m bridging loan was provided by the lender.
Most bridging loans are used to complete house sales and are well below the amount lent to The Lady. The loan to The Lady demonstrates that multimillion pound loans are available, as long as there is security that is valuable enough to cover the loan. The Lady has not disclosed the value of its headquarters building, but it is probably worth a lot more than the £7.4m loan.
In most cases, a bridging finance broker is able to find suitable lenders for all sizes of bridging loans, including ones that are well over £1m, as long as the borrower has a plan for when and how the loan can be repaid.
