Property type: Office
Office Property Bridging Loans Brighton
We arrange bridging finance against office property across the BN1 city centre, Edward Street, the Pavilion Quarter, the New England Quarter and Hove BN3. Loan sizes run £200,000 to £15 million, terms from 1 to 24 months, with completions in 7 to 21 days. Most office bridges price between 0.75% and 1.35% per month depending on covenant, vacancy and the credibility of the exit. The book skews toward repositioning, refurbishment and change-of-use rather than vanilla investment hold.
- Decisions in hours
- Completion in days
- £100k to £25m
- East Sussex specialists
The asset class
What office property looks like in East Sussex.
Office stock in Brighton and Hove ranges from Grade A floors at the New England Quarter and around Brighton station, through to secondary 1960s and 1970s blocks along Western Road and Queen's Road, through to converted Regency and Victorian terraced offices around the Pavilion Quarter, Kemptown and Hove. The market is bifurcated. Well-located, well-specced floors near the station and the seafront let well, often to digital, creative and financial-services occupiers. Secondary blocks have struggled with hybrid working and many are candidates for residential or hotel conversion under permitted development or full planning. Each of those positions reads differently to a bridging lender and the underwriting follows.
Use cases
Bridging use cases for office assets.
Office bridging in this market clusters around six use cases. The first is repositioning of secondary stock, where a buyer takes a half-empty 1970s block, refurbishes the common parts and the floors, and re-lets at a higher tone. The second is change-of-use to residential under permitted development, which has driven a large share of the office bridging book in Brighton and across East Sussex over the last seven years. The third is purchase of single-let investments with short unexpired terms, where the buyer expects either a re-gear or a vacant possession play. The fourth is development-exit where an office-to-resi conversion has reached practical completion and the units are marketing; bridging refinances the development facility while the sales close out. The fifth is capital raise against a low-LTV owner-occupied office, often by a creative agency or professional services firm wanting to fund the next deposit or works elsewhere. The sixth is auction purchase of small office buildings, typically below £1 million, where the 28-day clock and the vacant possession risk push the deal into bridging rather than term debt. Across all six, lenders look for a clear exit and a buyer who has done it before.
Brighton context
The Brighton Office Market: American Express, Silicon Beach and Edward Street
Brighton office demand sits on an economy that is materially different from most other South Coast cities. American Express operates its largest UK campus from the Edward Street headquarters in BN2, employing several thousand staff and acting as the single biggest private employer in the city. Around that anchor sits the Silicon Beach digital and new-media cluster, a network of around 1,500 creative, software, games and digital agencies concentrated in the BN1 city centre, North Laine and the New England Quarter. The Brighton Digital Festival heritage and the long-standing studio scene at Lighthouse and at Wired Sussex have built a deeper creative-tech occupier base than headcount alone suggests. Lloyds Bank runs a sizeable UK operations centre on the seafront, Legal & General holds a long-standing Brighton presence and Asda has its head-office digital functions in the city. Tourism contributes around £380 million annually to the economy and supports a parallel hospitality-and-events occupier base in the office market. The university spillover from the University of Brighton and the University of Sussex feeds a graduate hiring pipeline that holds the creative and digital firms in place. For a bridging case, the relevant point is that office demand in Brighton is driven by digital and creative, financial-services back office and tourism HQ rather than by speculative tech-and-life-sciences demand. Lenders who understand this price the asset correctly. BN1 and BN3 are the office hubs; BN1 holds the city centre and Pavilion Quarter cluster, BN3 (Hove) holds the Church Road and Goldstone corridor and the secondary stock that has driven much of the conversion play.
Valuation and lenders
Valuation and lender considerations.
Office valuations come back on yield-and-rent for income-producing assets, vacant possession for empty floors, and residual or GDV for conversion plays. Bridging lenders generally lend on the lower of the relevant figures. LTV caps sit at 60 to 65% on vacant secondary office, 65 to 70% on tenanted investments with a recognisable covenant, and 60 to 65% on as-is value where the case is a conversion play with day-one drawdown plus a refurbishment tranche. MT Finance, Octane Capital, United Trust Bank, Hope Capital and Together all run office bridging, with Avamore Capital, ASK Partners, OakNorth and Shawbrook stronger at the larger end. Lenders care about planning position, covenant strength and the realism of the exit. Vague exits kill office cases harder than any other asset class.
What we arrange
What we typically arrange.
A typical Brighton office bridge sits at £500,000 to £4 million, 60 to 70% LTV, 9 to 15 months term, 0.75 to 1.25% per month, arrangement fee 1.5 to 2%. We package the planning position, the covenant evidence and the exit plan up front so the lender sees the case the way the underwriter needs to see it. Conversion cases include a monitored works tranche; investment-purchase cases focus on the lease and the refinance route. Completion in 14 to 21 days is normal where the title and planning are clean. Where there is a contested planning position, the underwriting takes longer and the rate moves up.
FAQs
Office bridging questions
Can we bridge an office to residential conversion in Brighton?
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Yes. Office-to-residential conversions under Class MA permitted development and under full planning have been a steady part of the Brighton bridging book since 2017. We arrange the day-one purchase tranche against the as-is office value, a works tranche released against monitoring sign-off, and exit to BTL refinance for held units or open-market sale for disposals. Article 4 directions apply in parts of the city, so we check the planning position before going to lender, and we work with planning consultants who know the Brighton and Hove City Council position on these conversions.
What LTV is realistic on a vacant office block?
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Most lenders cap at 60 to 65% LTV against vacant possession value on a secondary office. Where the buyer has a credible repositioning plan, a strong track record, and a realistic refinance exit on a refurbished and re-let basis, 65% is achievable. Day-one LTV against purchase price can sit higher where the property is materially below market value, with the gap closed by an independent valuation. The exit drives the LTV more than the entry, so a clear refinance route opens the door to better terms.
Do bridging lenders take office cases backed by digital and creative tenants?
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Yes, and the named-bridging lenders are comfortable with the Brighton occupier profile. Digital and creative agencies, software houses, games studios and the supporting professional-services firms are all recognised covenants where the tenant has trading history and a credible lease. Lenders price for unexpired lease term, break clauses and any sector concentration, with the strongest cases sitting at 65 to 70% LTV on tenanted investments. The presence of American Express, Lloyds and Legal & General as anchor employers is generally seen as a stabilising factor for office demand across BN1 and BN3.
Tell us about the deal
Indicative terms within 24 hours.
A short triage call, then a sized indicative offer against a named lender for your office property in Brighton or across East Sussex.
Regulated bridging on owner-occupied residential property falls under FCA regulation. Unregulated bridging on commercial and investment property does not. We are not directly regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and we introduce regulated cases to authorised partners who carry out the regulated activity.
Next step
Talk to a Brighton office bridging specialist.
We arrange short-term finance on office property across Brighton, the Brighton and Hove unitary authority and the wider East Sussex market. Indicative terms in 24 hours.