Adams said the need for short-term finance will be impacted by an expansion of available options in the mainstream sector previously closed off to borrowers who did not fit the vanilla mould.
He said: “The remortgage market is recovering and there are now more options for borrowers to release equity from their properties.”
Figures from the LMS Remortgage Report showed that in the last month of 2013 remortgage lending rose to £4.16bn, a 43.5% rise compared to the same month last year.
This took the total estimated amount of equity withdrawn by remortgaging to £764m in December.
And Adams said further opportunities for borrowing are opening up as the property market is improving and more adverse credit lenders, such as Magellan Homeloans, are returning to the market.
“I don’t see the need for borrowers to turn to short-term finance if there are other avenues available,” he added.
But Rob Jupp, chief executive of specialist lending distributor Brightstar Financial, disagreed that the growth of the bridging market would slow down this year.
He said: “Bridging still has more room to grow until it reaches the top of the market. Richard does not deal with bridging and perhaps does not understand that most bridging loans would not be attractive to lenders offering non-conforming or remortgage products.”
Jupp said that most bridging loans are written for borrowers who have specific development requirements for properties which may be unmortgagable.
“There is a massive amount of housing stock in our country which is in a poor state of repair which bridging is a natural and obvious choice for,” he said.
“The re-emergence of the remortgage market will not effect bridging. What will effect bridging is banking – specifically business banking and until this is where it needs to be most requirements for development finance will be dealt with by bridging finance lenders.”
