RBS Real Estate Specialist Joins LendInvest

• LendInvest Development Finance lends from £200,000 to £7.5 million

• Loans cover up to 65% GDV or 90% Loan To Cost

London, 4 December 2015 – LendInvest, the leading online lender for short term property finance, has appointed Steve Larkin, an RBS real estate veteran, to launch officially the company’s first development finance product for experienced property entrepreneurs in response to demand from both borrowers and investors.

Steve joins LendInvest after a 26 year career at RBS where he held a range of senior roles in real estate credit, restructuring and origination. Most recently, Steve spent four years as Head of Residential Development within the restructuring team.

Steve will be responsible for the structure and strategy behind LendInvest’s first official Development Finance offering. Steve will be supported by two new business development managers, to be announced in due course.

LendInvest Development Finance caters for small scale development projects – a market underserved by many lenders since the 2008 crash.

Loans are available to experienced property developers seeking non-regulated finance to build residential or semi-commercial properties in England and Wales. Eligible developers can apply for loans up to 90% of the development cost (LTC), or up to 65% of the gross development value (GDV). Loans last up to 24 months.

Christian Faes, Co-Founder and CEO of Lendinvest, said: “The availability of development funds continues to be low, while demand from property entrepreneurs increases. The high street banks that have returned to development in the years since 2008 have a significantly reduced appetite to lend at the smaller end of the market. For them, the commercially attractive deals happen in the higher-end, larger-volume, bigger-margin space. Steve has a comprehensive understanding of the whole space and is the ideal person to launch and drive our product forward.”

Steve Larkin, Director of Development Finance, said: “It’s an exciting time to join a fast-growing leader of the alternative lending market. The sub-£10 million development market is where fast-moving bridging specialists have the best chance to achieve scale quickly. Not only does LendInvest already have over eight years’ experience in this space, this is a sector that is ripe for technology transformation.”

Matthew Tooth, Head of Distribution at LendInvest, added: “With Steve and his team coming on board, we look forward to speaking to more developers and their brokers about prospective projects on an official basis. We are excited too to be able to now make more development finance loans available to our investors who like the fact that loan security increases as the projects move towards completion.”

Adding development finance to the LendInvest loan portfolio is a natural next step for the company. It builds on the team’s successful track record of lending to existing bridging finance borrowers who have serviced their short-term loans well and have been invited to extend them to cover development projects.

In the past year, LendInvest has lent development finance across the country, helping borrowers to build or redevelop over 1,200 homes worth £360m. Recent borrowers have included:

• £260,000 loan to experienced property developer to buy approx 0.3 acre land in semi-rural Worcestershire to build four homes, with a GDV of £900,000
• £4 million loan to London property entrepreneur to fund development of 43 HMO flats in Gunnersbury, West London that incorporate principles of modern communal living
• £2.4 million loan to property surveyor-turned-developer to purchase land in Broadstairs, Kent, to build 14 homes

LendInvest is currently recruiting 25 new staff and in the process of finalising its move to new, larger offices near Oxford Circus to accommodate the company’s expansion plans.

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Contact

Carmen Murray, PR Manager – [email protected] / 020 3451 9624

About LendInvest

LendInvest is the leading online marketplace for short term property lending and investing. The company was spun out of Montello Bridging Finance, the established bridging finance provider, in summer 2013

LendInvest aims to bring the speed, efficiency and transparency of peer-to-peer lending to the mortgage market for the first time. In the last two years, LendInvest has originated over £420 million of loans to landlords and developers for terms lasting one month to three years, making it one of the most active short-to-medium term mortgage lenders in the UK.

LendInvest is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and in July 2015, it became the first peer-to-peer platform to be rated by a regulated European credit rating agency.

All loans are secured by a registered first charge against property in the UK and the company has consistently provided returns to investors between 6-9% per annum.

For further information, please visit www.lendinvest.com and follow the company at @lendinvest.