-1.png "Average difference in net loan across bridging, commercial mortgage and development finance")
Same expensive mistake. Every finance type. Every time.
Nearly every search we ran across bridging, commercial mortgages and development finance revealed HUGE differences in net loan amounts.
Property investors and developers who still rely on manual loan sourcing and don't compare lenders from across the market stand to lose hundreds of thousands in leverage.
.png?width=1214&height=786&name=Graph%20of%20Bridging%20Uses%20(1).png "Average net loan gap between lenders on the same bridging, commercial and development deal")
£250K average net loan difference
On 100 bridging deals at £1.4m purchase price with varying location, property & project type.
When borrowers are forced to put more of their own money into a deal, that capital is locked up. It can't be deployed on the next site, the next acquisition, or the next opportunity
.png "Graph of Bridging Uses (15)")
-1.png "Graphs showing the range in net loan sizes on the same deal")
What we learnt
- The most common deals = huge leverage gaps.
- Pure Residential averages over £251k in lost leverage per deal.
- No deal type escapes it.
- Every asset class in the data shows a significant gap. Not one exception.
- The best case is still £55,000.
- One loan search, a £1.4m land purchase in Scotland delivered the smallest gap of just £55k between lenders.
£306K average net loan difference
On 100 commercial mortgage deals at £1.5m purchase price with varying location, property & asset type.
When borrowers settle for the wrong lender on a commercial mortgage, they could miss out on anything up to £375k in net borrowing, tying up unnecessary capital that could be working harder across their portfolio.
.png?width=1165&height=1128&name=Graph%20of%20Bridging%20Uses%20(16).png "Average difference in net loan between lenders on the same commercial investment, by asset type")
.png "Graphs showing the range of leverage gaps on the same commercial mortgage deal")
With an average gap of £367k between the highest and lowest net loan, retail investment shows the widest spread, with office properties closely behind at £349k.
£842k average net loan difference
On 100 development finance deals with a £3.7m project and £5.2m GDV, varied by location, property & asset type.
Most developers still source finance the way they always have — a few calls, a trusted broker, a gut feeling. When the difference between lenders on a single £5m+ GDV deal can exceed £1m in net loan, manual loan sourcing has become the most expensive habit in the industry.
-1.png "Average difference in net loan between lenders on the same project, by asset type")
-1.png "Range in loan leverage and ROCE on the same project")
What we learnt:
- Residential dominates the gap
- A disparity of over £1.03m net loan on a residential development finance deal can be career-killing. That's a deposit on your next site (or two) sitting with the wrong lender.
- No asset class escapes
- Even Mixed-Use properties — the category where lenders most aligned — show an average gap of £343k. That's still over a third of a million pounds per deal.
- Higher leverage directly boosts your returns
- Across all deals, the highest leverage deals delivered an average ROCE of more than 67% higher than the lowest. Less capital in means more return on what you put in.
The compound effect
In our £3.7m scenario, the lowest deposit required by one lender was £450,000, the highest nearly £1.4m - on the same deal. That's nearly £1m difference.
With those numbers, and an equal starting equity of £1.4m:
Borrower A uses Brickflow to search for development finance, finds the highest leverage deal and spreads capital across 3 developments.
Borrower B goes direct to a lender, gets the lowest net loan and has to inject all their capital into just 1 project.
Losing £1m leverage on a deal is gut-wrenching. But factor in opportunity cost, and it could be a colossal loss of 20 extra developments over a career. That's life changing.
-1-1-1-1-1.png?width=1091&height=800&name=Graph%20of%20Bridging%20Uses%20(11)-1-1-1-1-1.png "Graph of Bridging Uses (11)-1-1-1-1-1")
One lender ≠ the market
There's over 160 lenders in CRE. Going direct to one lender or using brokers who still source loans manually will cost you ££££.
Low rates ≠ the best deal
Low rates often come with low LTVs and high deposits. Paying 0.1% higher can decrease your capital input and 2x your ROCE.
Manual loan sourcing
Manual loan sourcing covers a tiny fraction of the market. Brickflow covers 100s of lenders instantly. No more legwork, no more guessing.
Methodology
How we collected our data
Based on 2026 platform data, we selected average deal sizes for bridging, commercial mortgage and development finance and created sample scenarios for each. We then ran and analysed 100s of simulated finance searches.
Our core scenario numbers remained constant, with variations in location, asset type, borrowing entity and certain loan terms.
Each scenario was run through Brickflow’s lender comparison platform, with data collected on gross and net loan amount, deposit requirements, profit, ROCE and more. This allowed us to compare how different lenders responded to the same borrowing scenario and assess how much net lending could vary between lenders.
Our scenarios:
Locations included North East/West, South East/West, East England, London, the Midlands, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland.
For each search, we calculated the difference between the highest and lowest net loan amounts available from lenders in the market, highlighting the funding gap borrowers could face by not comparing options.
We used these figures to calculate the average difference in net loan amounts in each finance type, producing average shortfalls of £250,000 in bridging, £306,000 in commercial mortgages and £842,000 in development finance.
The data reflects a live snapshot of available lender terms, for specific scenarios at the time the searches were carried out (Aug 2026). Excludes lender results below 50% LTV/LTC to reflect realistic borrowing scenarios.