Octane Capital has provided an £8.5m development exit loan to a client of RHL.

The loan facility, secured against a completed 46-unit office-to-resi PDR (‘permitted development rights’) scheme in Essex with a value of £12.3m, also incorporates £1m of equity release for the client to provide cash flow for future projects.

Following a marketing campaign starting in February, 80% of the units have already been reserved or exchanged, but the Octane Capital exit loan provides additional time to sell off the remaining units.

Working on the loan were Laura Brown at London-based lawyers, Howard Kennedy, Tony Hughes of RHL and Alex Tyrwhitt and Justin Cooper at Octane Capital. Jim Crafford, partner at Strutt & Parker, also produced a detailed valuation report at short notice.

The development exit facility is Octane’s latest loan introduced by RHL, a UK-wide specialist broker and distributor focused on large and complex commercial and residential loans.

Tony Hughes, managing director of RHL, said: “Octane were once again the perfect fit for this particular client. The finance provided has allowed them to move off their existing development loan, given them a longer marketing period to sell the remaining units and, crucially, releases a significant amount of equity to invest into future projects.

“We’ve secured finance for this client multiple times through Octane and it has helped us achieve a record month of our own, arranging in excess of £20m of bridging and commercial finance.”

Mark Posniak (pictured), managing director of Octane Capital, added: “RHL are a first class introducer whose clients generally have larger and more complex financing needs, which suits us down to the ground.

“Once again, Tony and the rest of the RHL team were professional, diligent and responsive throughout the whole process and there’s no doubt we’ll be completing more loans with them in the months and years ahead.”