Political uncertainty benefits bridging as annual lending hit £4.3bn in June

The lender’s bridging index revealed lending was 4.2% higher than in the year to June 2016 and was approaching the pre-EU Referendum high of £4.4bn.

The sector had stalled following the Brexit vote, but Stephen Wasserman, managing director of West One, said the data showed the recovery was now well underway.

He said: “With this period including the significant political and economic volatility of Article 50 being issued, a snap General Election that delivered a hung Parliament and then the formal initiation of Brexit negotiations, the continued recovery only serves to underpin the resilience of the bridging market.”

Wasserman said bridging was benefiting from the uncertain climate, as developers and lenders were turning to specialist finance while high street lenders lacked the appetite for such deals.

“We’ve seen a steady rise in demand for our bridging over the course of the last nine months, and suspect this is due to more and more property professionals turning to alternative forms of finance as a result of political uncertainty affecting appetite from conventional lenders,” he said.

“The drop in business in the wider market which followed the Leave vote last June appears to have been only a blip, and has since been followed by a return to sustained growth. We expect that the bridging market will continue to this pattern of solid growth, in spite of an apparent slowdown in the housing market, as it takes up further slack in funding for property projects.”