Bridging finance was never meant to be complicated.
When it took off, decades ago, it was simple and it was fast. The idea was straightforward: you had a property, you needed money quickly, and a lender advanced against the value of the asset. Speed was the whole point. Bridging existed precisely because a mortgage was too slow.Â
Then, over the years, it started to slow down.
Some of that was sensible. After the 2008 credit crunch, lenders got more careful. Regulation from 2014 to 2016 raised standards and professionalised the sector. But somewhere in there, bridging quietly picked up the habits of the thing it was built to beat. Physical site visits. Weeks of underwriting. Full local authority searches. Two sets of solicitors. And at the end of it all, a decision in principle that still had to survive the real underwriting.
Add it up and, despite all the “48-hour” marketing, most bridging today realistically takes two to four weeks, with valuation and legal work setting the pace.
We think that was a wrong turn. A bridge is supposed to get you funds out quickly. If it takes as long as a mortgage, it stops being a bridge.
So we have taken it back to basics. Fast. Asset-led. Matched to active lenders in real time. And, on suitable cases, ending in a fully underwritten offer in hours rather than weeks. Not a slower, more cautious version of what bridging became, but a return to what it was for in the first place.
The old standard is the new standard. That is how bridging should have stayed, and it is what Broka is built to deliver.
The rest of the market is starting to agree. Bridging completion times recently fell to an eight-year low as speed came back into focus. We are naming what is already happening, and building around it.
