The Intermediary – December 2025 - Flipbook - Page 45
T H E I N T E RV I E W
Avamore Capital
[Brokers] have a key role to
play in helping developers lay out
their plans, packaging and creating
cost breakdowns and contingencies
alongside the client and the lender in
order to ensure a deal gets going on
the right foot”
He explains: “It’s not to replace people. It’s
to take away the administrative burden and
actually give them the opportunity to focus
more time on finding solutions.
“‘Innovation’ and ‘solutions’ are two words
that we often use.”
This fits with the firm’s wider approach to
lending, he continues.
Avamore Capital takes seriously its
commitment not to fall into the “tick-box
exercises” that can be seen among some other
lenders, and instead to approach each potential
deal with a solution-oriented mindset,
leveraging its expertise across the fields
of development, bridging, refurbishments
and conversions.
Over the years, the firm evolved its
proposition, and has been able to stretch its
lending to go above 90% loan-to-cost (LTC),
with no cap on gross development value (GDV),
depending on the scheme.
It also prides itself on catering for the smaller
end of the market, providing lower value loans
that other institutions might not make time for,
but which contribute to the overall health of
the development and housing markets.
While the products themselves have
improved over the years, Butler says Avamore
always aims to keep them simple, preferring to
cater for complexity in the form of strategy and
problem solving, rather than complex criteria.
He continues: “We don’t come up with a
30-page criteria guide. Once we understand
a scheme, we will always aim to provide a
solution.”
One area in which Butler is particularly
proud of this flexibility is in Avamore Capital’s
provision of what he says is “one of, if not the
only, true part-complete development
funding options.”
This was created not to simply clear up the
end of a deal, but to allow Avamore Capital to
“genuinely step in at any stage of the build,”
which he says is increasingly important in a
market plagued with potential mishaps and
delays at all stages of development.
Development difficulties
Anyone with awareness of the construction
and development market knows that projects
face considerable challenges in the current
environment. One of the biggest challenges lies
around planning permission, for example.
Butler says that, despite not lending on
projects until permission has been acquired, he
still sees the ill-effects of a snarled up system,
with developers taking out bridging finance
elsewhere for six to nine months, facing delays
up to 18 months, and being left facing far
higher gearing than they expected, or having to
cushion the blow from their own funds.
To try and pre-empt and resolve this issue,
he suggests brokers and their clients work from
the end goal backwards.
He explains: “What does the client want?
They don’t want that plot of land, or that house
they’re about to demolish, they want the units
they’re going to build in 18 to 24 months’ time.
“So, you have to ask, how do we get
them there, not just over the first hurdle?
Sometimes, if they go to just a bridging lender
in the first instance, that lender’s concern
is its appetite, and its appetite is not for the
development itself.”
Working with a lender that does bridging and
development can be the key to that long-term
view, and to giving developers the breathing
room to navigate a difficult system.
This is also where flexibility and adaptability
come into play. This, Butler says, shows
through products such as part-complete, or
the human touch allowing Avamore Capital to
approach each application individually, and it
does not stop once the deal has been agreed.
From the difficulty of making accurate cost
predictions, to the problems – both physical
and financial, from unexpected costs to
material shortages – that can arise along the
way, Butler knows that “each scheme will have
quirks, niches, and bumps in the road that we
need to overcome.”
He adds: “We are not a tick-box lender,
and we never will be. The real work starts on
completion – you’ve got 12 to 18 months with a
client that you need to support.”
This is also where the relationships with
brokers come into play. Avamore is around 95%
broker-led, and Butler insists “they are vital” to
its operations.
Brokers therefore have a key role to play
in helping developers lay out their plans, →
December 2025 | The Intermediary
43
