Blend secures new funding line to launch bridging offering

Specialist development finance lender, Blend, has secured a new £50 million+ institutional funding line to offer bridging to property developers.

The committed capital allows Blend, which launched in 2018, to add new products to support property developers.

The new institutional funding line is added to Blend’s existing family office-backed and institutional funding. The company had previously announced that it had secured £120 million committed capital from a consortium of large family offices to boost its lending capability and further support mid-size property developers in the UK.

Yann Murciano, CEO at Blend, commented: “At Blend, we have the appetite to support quality developers in all market conditions. We appreciate many developers have faced a challenging market environment over the past 18 months. Consequently, sales have been slow and exits have taken longer than initially expected and planned. Many developers we speak to have had their development loan facilities expired and are under increased pressure from their lender who are experiencing lender fatigue.

"We are keen to support those developers by stepping in to help them carry their projects to a point where they can achieve their sales targets instead of having to sell at a discount or accept any offer just to exit.

"At Blend, we’ve built a reputation for being a through-the-cycle lender, a lender who understand the development process and the challenges that come with it. So, we’ve built a product that answers the needs of developers, and we are very excited about this new institutional funding line that’ll increase our dry power to continue supporting developers.”