To the uninitiated, property-related lending begins and ends with mortgages. For developers and property investors, however, there are other possibilities for financing property investment – often in the form of short-term funding.

​

Bridging loans, for example, might be familiar to anyone who’s bought a property at auction – they’re used to ‘bridge’ the gap between, for example, the purchase of a new home and the sale of a current home. Similarly, on a bigger scale, development finance is a loan taken out by developers to cover the cost of building (or converting) a property.

​

This kind of finance, which is sometimes called a property development loan, allows developers to crack on with the next big project – and they can repay the loan in various ways, whether that be through the sale of the building or – if they’re going down the buy-to-let route – via a specialised mortgage.