Funding Circle Crosses £100m in Property Loans

Funding Circle’s property loans offering has crossed the £100 million mark after just 18 months.

Funding Circle branched out into the property space in April 2014, initially launching with a range commercial mortgages, development loans and investment loans. The platform then entered into the short-term bridging space in June this year, declaring then that it could thus offer prospective borrowers the “full suite” of commercial property finance loans.

Funding Circle’s cumulative property-based lending grew from around £6m to over £60m between August 2014 and June 2016. With that figure now having exceeded £100m, it’s clear that the property offering is growing at an impressive pace. So how does Funding Circle now stand in relation to the UK’s best-established P2P property lenders? LendInvest continues to lead the pack with £390m in cumulative lending to date, and Wellesley is holding down the second spot with £263m lent, according the Liberum AltFi Volume Index UK. That places Funding Circle third in volume within the UK’s increasingly crowded P2P property lending sector. Funding Circle UK’s cumulative lending volume (for all varieties of loan) currently stands at roughly £850m.

The £100m that has been lent through Funding Circle’s property offering to date has allowed small developers to construct over 600 new homes across the country. Parik Chandra, who is a property finance specialist at Funding Circle, commented:

“Funding Circle’s fast turnaround times for assessing applications set us apart from other lenders and is something that introducers really value. We offer a professional service, with the same rigorous credit assessment as traditional lenders. For commercial property and development finance loans, we offer a four-to-six week turnaround and do all of our due diligence within that period, including credit assessment and independent valuation reports. Bridging loans can in many cases be turned around quicker.”

“More than 85% of small property developers are coming back to us for subsequent schemes. Many of them are disillusioned with the banks, who often aren’t in a position to help them.”