United Trust Bank was approached to fund the conversion of former office premises to provide 68 apartments in a good town centre location to the west of London.
The property is just a few minutes’ walk from the train station enabling an easy commute into London. In addition its central location means that residents will have all of the town’s shops, bars and restaurants on their doorstep. And so whilst the location is currently commercial, we were able to see that there would be a good market for these residential units.
The borrower is a group comprising a combination of experienced development and construction professionals and a wealthy private investor who was prepared to provide a guarantee.
The group have used their combined skills and experience to obtain a very viable planning consent. Having obtained a permitted development approval to convert the existing building, they submitted a further application to add additional floors and re-clad the building. Thus over the next sixteen months a rather bland and tired looking office building will be transformed into an
attractive apartment development.
United Trust Bank has provided a facility of £4.1m being 55% of anticipated GDV and represents 80% of budgeted development costs.