The Intermediary – September 2026 - Flipbook - Page 32
BUY-TO-LET
In focus
sk most landlords
what bridging finance
is for, and you’ll get
some version of the
same answer: it’s
what you use when
a mortgage falls through, when a
chain collapses, when you’re stuck.
Emergency money. Expensive money.
A last resort.
That view is out of date, and
it’s costing landlords deals. I’ve
underwrien bridging cases for over 15
years now, and I founded MS Lending
Group because I saw an opportunity
–I was tired of watching good investors
lose good properties to slow money.
The paern never changes: the
landlord who treats bridging as a
fallback is always one step behind the
landlord who treats it as a plan.
The best investors I speak to don’t
reach for bridging when things go
wrong. They reach for it deliberately,
at the start, because it’s the fastest way
to get an offer accepted, the fastest way
to complete, and, used properly, one of
the cheapest ways to build a portfolio
at scale.
The ones still treating it as a ‘break
glass in emergency’ product are
watching sharper operators buy the
deals they wanted.
A
Slow money
Landlords are operating in a market
that punishes hesitation. Lenders with
standard buy-to-let (BTL) mortgages
want weeks, sometimes months, to
underwrite, value and complete.
Meanwhile, the properties worth
having – the ones priced to sell
quickly, the probate sales, the auction
lots, the vendor who needs a fast,
clean exit – don’t wait around for a
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The Intermediary | September 2026
mortgage offer to clear commiee.
Add in tighter lending criteria, valuers
backed up for weeks, and an Energy
Performance Certificate (EPC) and
regulatory backdrop that’s only geing
more demanding for rental stock,
and the traditional mortgage route
has become a genuinely poor tool for
winning a competitive deal.
It’s a fine tool for owning a property
once you’ve already won it. It is a
terrible tool for winning it in the
first place.
That’s the gap bridging fills. It’s
why I tell every investor I work with
the same thing: you can pose as a
cash buyer.
Not figuratively, literally. With the
right bridging facility lined up in the
background, you make offers with
no mortgage contingency, no chain,
and a completion date the vendor can
actually trust.
You are, to every seller and
every estate agent in the process,
indistinguishable from the person
turning up with a banker’s dra.
That single change in how you’re
perceived is worth more to your
negotiating position than almost
anything else you can do.
The cost objection
Everyone’s first objection to bridging
is the rate. Fair enough, on paper it
costs more than a mortgage, month
for month.
But that comparison only makes
sense if you’re planning to hold
bridging debt for years, which you’re
not. In practice, you’re holding it
for weeks or months, long enough
to secure the property, and oen,
complete some works, before
refinancing onto term debt.
MICHAEL STRATTON
is CEO and founder of MS
Lending Group
Here’s the bit that gets missed,
and it’s the first thing I look at when
I’m underwriting a case: if bridging
finance is what lets you buy keenly,
genuinely below market value,
because you could move fast and
negotiate like cash, the cost of the
bridge is oen negligible against the
discount you’ve just captured.
Save 5%, 8%, 10% on the purchase
price, because you could complete in
days rather than months, and a few
weeks of bridging interest is rounding
error by comparison.
The finance isn’t the cost centre in
that transaction. It’s the thing that
made the discount possible.
That’s the mindset shi. Stop
pricing bridging against a mortgage
rate. Price it against the deal
it unlocks.
Buy first, commit later
There’s another shi worth naming,
because it’s quietly become the default
strategy for the sharpest investors out
there: buy with bridging, add value,
let it, then refinance, rather than
commiing to long-term debt day one.
