High net worth City based brokerage Sirius Property Finance, part of the Brightstar Financial Group, has completed two complex deals with Amicus Property Finance this week.
The first transaction was for a large value, single residential unit in central London where the client was planning a refurbishment and onward sale of the property. The borrower had negotiated a purchase price below the full, open market value and Amicus were able to take a commercial view and lent against the value of the asset rather than the purchase price.
The borrower was a non UK resident, but had experience of property development within the UK and Amicus was happy to lend a total £2.6m against the property purchase price of £3.1m.
Nicholas Christofi, director of Sirius Property Finance, said: “It is refreshing to work with a lender that takes a common sense approach to property deals. We are in uncertain times in the market at the moment, so it is important to work with a lender that understands the deal and can offer a flexible structure.”
Sirius and Amicus also transacted a large income producing office acquisition in the same week. The borrowers were specialists in permitted development office to residential conversions, but they needed to work with a lender that could structure the commercial acquisition taking into account the residential potential. Amicus was able to do this by looking at the projected end value of the development and working back to arrive at a residual valuation for the building and working from this to increase their day one advance.
Amicus met with the borrowers to fully understand the structure and the timings of the deal and this allowed them to fund £3.7m at 90% loan to cost pending the tenants vacating the premises and development work commencing.
Keith Aldridge (pictured), managing director at Amicus Property Finance, said: “We are delighted to be working with Sirius and that our experienced team of specialist underwriters can work flexibly and closely with our brokers on more complex deals such as these in the timeframes rightly demanded by the client.”
