How Long Does a Bridging Loan Take? A Broker’s Honest Answer

The short answer, before the detail

Four answers, because there are four kinds of deal. All of them assume you’re doing your bit, and I’ll come back to what your bit is.

Two things about that table. Working days, not calendar days. Lenders don’t work weekends and neither do I. And all of it is subject to the case, so don’t come at me if yours is straightforward and it takes eleven working days rather than ten.

It breaks into three stages, and only one of them is quick

Everything that happens between you ringing me and the money landing sits in one of three buckets. The lender, the valuation, and the legals. Knowing which is which is most of the battle, because people worry about the wrong one.

Stage one, the lender. This is the fast part

I know that isn’t what you expect to hear.

Indicative terms take between one and four hours. That’s not a sales line, that’s what actually happens. On the day I recorded this I got four sets of indicative terms back from four different lenders on four different scenarios. A couple came back straight away because the enquiry had enough detail in it to answer. The rest were in within four hours.

Then you say you want to proceed, the lender tells us what it needs, and we package the case exactly the way they’ve asked for it. Not nearly. Exactly. Do that and an offer subject to valuation can come back within a couple of hours.

I said days first when I was recording this and then corrected myself, because even I still undersell it. The lenders are the quickest part of the whole process. I’ll state that as a fact.

The skill isn’t speed, it’s choosing. Every lender is better at something than the one next to it, the same way people are. If you tell your broker that speed is the thing you care about most, that changes which lender we go to before we go anywhere.

Stage two, the valuation. An hour, or three weeks

Here’s where it forks.

If the lender can run a desktop valuation or an AVM, and the numbers support it, you can have that done inside an hour. Submit at twelve, underwriter picks it up at two, and it’s back the same afternoon. There’s one lender I know of that runs the AVM when you ask for indicative terms, so the terms come back saying you don’t need a valuation at all.

If someone has to physically go out, give it one to three weeks. And that’s not three weeks of valuing. Here’s where it actually goes.

• The valuation gets instructed and you get a quote.
• You pay for it. This is the bit that catches people.
• The valuer books you into a diary that’s probably full for the week, so realistically it’s next week.
• They go, they write it up, they send it to the lender.
• The lender then has to read it and agree with it.

On paying for it, I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has told me they need this done fast, we’ve got the quote across, and then they’ve taken forty eight hours to pay it. That’s two whole days where nothing happened, on a deal where speed was the entire point.

If you want a bridge done in days rather than weeks, the valuation is the thing that decides it. So ask, before you commit to a lender, whether a desktop valuation is on the table. If your loan to value is high, seventy five per cent gross or you’re pushing for eighty, the honest answer is probably not. Push the loan to value higher and you’ve usually bought yourself a physical valuation. If you want to understand why the gross figure and what lands in your account aren’t the same number, that is covered properly in gross versus net.

Stage three, the legals. This is the slow one

Two to six weeks, in my experience, and it’s the biggest single slowdown in the process.

It moves faster if the transaction is simple. No title splitting, no transfer of equity, none of the more interesting things you can do with a bridge. Once any of that’s involved, there’s genuinely more work for the legal team to do and it takes longer.

I’ll put this as strongly as I can. If speed matters to you, the conveyancer matters more than the lender. Get one who understands bridging.

And if you find a cheap one who doesn’t do much bridging, you haven’t saved money. You’ve spent three weeks. That’s the trade you’ve actually made, whether anyone told you that or not.

One thing worth asking about. Some lenders allow dual representation, where one firm acts for both sides, and some require separate representation where you have your solicitor and they have theirs. Where dual is available I’d take it every single time, even where that lender isn’t the cheapest option on the table. If you’ve ever waited on one set of solicitors you’ll understand why two sets isn’t twice the fun. Most lenders do want separate representation, so it’s not always on offer. Ask anyway.

What actually causes delays

• Consent from another lender. If you are doing a second charge, the first charge lender has to agree, and they are in no hurry at all. It makes no difference to them whether you get your second charge or not. I have had to fax a high street lender a consent letter and then wait for them to fax back. If you need consent, start that on day one, not week three.
• Planning that isn’t in hand. Or someone tells me it’s permitted development and then it turns out it isn’t. Be straight about what the project needs, because it’ll come out during the underwrite either way.
• The valuation coming in under the purchase price. This is the bane of everyone’s life.
• Independent legal advice, which you’ll usually need if you’re buying through a limited company, because your own solicitor can’t advise you on it. Get it booked at the start rather than discovering you need it at the end.
• Title splitting. We do a lot of it and it’s completely fine. It just adds time to the legals, so build it into your expectations.

Stop bending your deal to fit the lender’s criteria

This one deserves its own heading because it causes more wasted weeks than anything else on that list.

A lender has an attractive product. You want that product. But the product only goes to sixty five per cent loan to value, and your deal needs more than that. So the property becomes worth a bit more than you first said it was worth, and suddenly it fits.

Then the valuer goes out. And the valuer doesn’t care what the lender’s criteria are. They’ll value it at what it’s worth.

Same thing with the cost of works. A refurb product allows a limited percentage of the purchase price for the works, so the scheme quietly becomes a light refurbishment rather than a heavy one, because the light refurbishment product is better. But if you’ve reduced the works, you’ve reduced what the property will be worth at the end, and people want to keep the old finished value anyway. It doesn’t hold together.

If you’re adding a bedroom, a dormer, an extension at the back, the finished value goes up accordingly. If you’re changing the kitchen, the bathroom, a coat of paint and new carpet, it doesn’t reach the same number. The valuer will work that out in about ten minutes.

So don’t map your situation onto the lender’s criteria. Find the lender whose criteria already match your situation, and the whole thing goes through without a hiccup.

The biggest cause of delay is you

People will either love me or hate me for this one.

It’s not the lender. It’s not the valuer. It’s the client, sending information in drips and drabs.

If the lender asks for something, send it. All of it. Don’t send half and wait to be asked for the rest, and please don’t question why they want it.

The assets and liabilities form is the usual one. People don’t want to fill it in and would like me to do it, which is difficult, because I don’t know what your assets and liabilities are. Or it comes back with some of the assets and some of the liabilities on it, and the lender says there isn’t enough there, and then it turns out there was another property and a savings account that just didn’t get mentioned.

Or I ask for a schedule of works and it arrives looking like it was written on the back of a napkin. We are asking somebody to lend you a significant amount of money and to be comfortable that you can deliver the project. A napkin doesn’t do that.

The clients I like best send the schedule of works and then send more than I asked for. I’m that kind of broker. The more you give me, the more I can do with it, and the more likely I am to answer the lender’s questions before they’ve asked them.

And send it in one go. If you send me five emails across a week I will lose track of which one had the thing in it, and then we’re both looking for it.

What actually makes it fast

• Have your money ready, and know what each bit of it is for. Deposit, stamp duty, legals. If it is a development with staged drawdowns, understand that you fund the stage and get paid afterwards.
• Know your numbers and be realistic. Not best case, not worst case. If the works cost eighty thousand pounds then it’s eighty thousand pounds, not seventy and not ninety five.
• Get those numbers from an actual builder. If a lender ever had to repossess and finish the works, they’d employ a real company to do it, not Barry the window cleaner who gave you a price down the pub.
• Instruct a solicitor who knows bridging, and ask your broker whether any lender on the table offers dual representation.
• Ask whether a desktop valuation is possible before you commit to a lender.
• Tell your broker everything, warts and all. We’ll work out what the lender needs to know. What we can’t do is find out halfway through underwriting, because at that point it’s very hard to convince anyone that either of us knows what we’re doing.

So how long does it take?

Back to the table at the top. Five to ten working days if everything is clean and you’re on it. Three to four weeks for a normal case with a proper valuation. Six to ten weeks if there’s a second charge and consent to chase. Around eight weeks once planning or multiple titles are in play.

But that isn’t the full answer.

Fast finance isn’t about finding the fast lender. It’s about removing the reasons you’d be slow.

Every question you dodge costs you. One thing you don’t mention could be two days on your completion date. Don’t tell me there’s no knotweed when there is, because we’ll find out, and that’ll be another week.

If you’ve got a deadline and you want to know whether it’s realistic, ring me on 0330 133 4442 or book a call and we will work through it. Twenty minutes, no credit check, and I’d rather tell you it’s tight now than in week six.

Your property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on a mortgage or any other debt secured on it.

This is general information, not a quotation, an offer of finance or personalised advice. No lender is named. Timescales, loan to values, fees and lender criteria vary by lender and by deal, and the terms available to you may be different. Bridging finance is short-term secured borrowing and it can be expensive. If a secured loan is not repaid in line with its terms, the lender may take enforcement action against the property or any other security provided.