Lock-In: Roma Finance

We welcomed back Roma Finance to the Lock-In series for our penultimate episode of season five.

Roma joined first us earlier this year when we first launched with them as an official partner, but now they had their feet under the table it was time for a different kind of conversation.

For it, we were joined by Roma’s Head of Marketing, Charlotte Rutter, and New Business Manager, Ben Lloyd.

Lending Less Ordinary

Roma isn’t your usual lender; they pride themselves on their competitive rates and range of services available, specialising in short and medium-term loans, usually less than a year in length.

The usual aspects are covered: bridging, development, and refurbishment finance for residential and commercial aspects for example, but we will be diving deep into these later.

But there’s a less, or perhaps an extra, ordinary side to Roma in further products too, particularly useful in our current age of uncertainty. Specialisms include medium-term Holiday Let products that giving investors the ability to transition away from existing bridging or development loans.

Unlike many finance brokers who carry only a few lines of sourcing finance – Roma has eight different options to get you the best deal for any situation.

Their ethos is people before paperwork – so if you’ve got a solid case as to why your project will succeed, they’ll want to hear it.

Going with the FLOW

One of the main irks of getting finance for any deal is the lengthy process you have to go through to get anything approved. In fact, the average bridging finance deal trudges its way through more than 50 days of desk-to-desk checking and double-checking before approval.

Roma have brought this process down to only 15 days on average through the introduction of their RomaFLOW process.

And here’s the secret to how this works: most cases aren’t that complicated. Once you’ve got an agreement in principle, signed application form, and a valuation – the vast majority of cases don’t need all the usual toing and froing before a decision can be reached.

So Roma have decided that everything, except for the most complicated of cases, goes through the RomaFlow. Quick decisions, effective action, and direct access to the underwriter – what’s not to love?

Across The Bridge

Bridging with Roma has been made as simple as possible.

There’s a two-tier system for sourcing finance, depending on your team’s experience in the property market. If you’re a first-timer, there’s going to be more risk, but if you’re a seasoned pro your experience is taken into account with a better rate.

The tiers are RomaPlus and RomaPrime respectively – apparently Optimus Plus was taken – and rates start from 0.60% with an LTV ratio of 75%.

Of course, the rates and acceptance are dependent on credit history and other various factors such as the purpose of the loan, amount, and circumstances.

Roma’s slickening of this process is indicative of a wider financial trend we’re seeing at the minute – investors are now seeing the value of effective bridging to supercharge ROI and portfolio growth.

Groundbreaking Developments

Development finance is slightly different to refurbishment finance, and it doesn’t always mean building from the ground up. The transition of a property from a commercial premises to residential units, for instance, is treated as development, rather than refurbishment.

The commercial to resi (C2R) strategy has been caught in a boom of popularity since the General Permitted Development Order (GDPO) changes of 2015. Once the early adopters proved the rewards of the strategy outweigh the risks, and succeeded, the sector has seen exponential growth.

Roma have kept their eye on the ball with this surge in C2R demand, and optimised their processes to cater for it. As usual with Roma, the credentials of your team are the key, and this would be reflected in the rates and acceptance.

Re-lease the Kraken!

One of Roma’s most popular finance products is their buy-to-let financing – often used when exiting a bridging loan.

It’s popular with our favourite kind of property investor in particular, the LNPG member, as the Buy-to-Let financing option to exit an existing bridging loan. This is down to Roma’s flexibility more than anything – finance, and bridging finance especially, is an expensive thing to get wrong, so having a finance partner that can stick by you through the inevitable ebbs an flows of life in property is worth a tremendous amount.

More good news is that limited companies can be accepted for this financing, and you can even use this type of financing for an HMO up to 8 rooms.

With this set at a 5-year term with up to 75% LTV ratio, and top slicing available it could be the go-to option to free up cash in your property portfolio.

That wraps up our webinar with Roma Finance and their extensive range of financing solutions for the property market.

You can find more on their official partner page.