Lock-In: Roma Finance

Whether you’re an experienced investor, or just starting up – sooner or later, you’re gonna run out of money. With this in mind, it was only right that we brought Roma Finance onboard, a specialist lending partner. After officially launching earlier this year, we were joined by their Commercial Director, Nick Jones, and New Business Manager, Ben Lloyd to give us the full overview of Roma’s lending solutions and how they can support your property business.

Building Bridges

Roma specialise in bridging finance, a short-term loan (usually less than a year) used by property investors for a quick cash injection. Perfect for when you need to expand your property portfolio at speed, or get a project over the line.

The use of bridging finance is only expected to increase, mainly due to the changing role of the high street, urban environments and commercial properties. For investors, these commercial areas are becoming more appealing as conversions into residential or development properties. But sometimes, a combination can be the real money maker – in fact, Mintel predict that investors will continue to diversify their portfolio through mixed use buildings.

Overall, the future of bridging is bright, as more investors gain an understanding of how best to use bridging as a tool to further growth.

On the Lend

Whether you’re borrowing from Roma or not, Nick Jones offered some top tips in selecting a lender.

The size of the lender is important to ensure that they’re able to fund your projects sufficiently – but crucially, these lenders need to have access to sustainable funding lines. This funding can come from a range of sources like: peer-to-peer lending, banks or building societies, high-net-worth individuals, or private equity.

Whoever you borrow from, make sure they have you and your project’s best interests at heart. Nick waxed lyrical during the webinar of the importance of building a relationship with your lender.

By building a relationship, it becomes a much simpler and tailored process because they’re familiar with your history and background. It’s a stark contrast to using the high street lenders, as more often that not  – you just become another number entered into the abyss.

After all, you don’t want the complexities of your project to be reduced to a black and white binary option.

People Above Property

And this is where we tell you why Roma Finance are the real deal. Every bridging financer will tell you they have the slickest solicitors or the best rates, and these are undoubtedly important – but it’s these relationships that Roma are so great at building that sets them apart, priding themselves on being a ‘family orientated’ business.

Their ethos is putting people above property and doing the right thing, which has been particularly evident during the coronavirus pandemic. 62 of Roma’s customers and their projects were impacted by the virus, and as bridging finance is typically short term – this put the completion of projects under significant pressure. But, by Roma working together with the customer, all of them were granted an extension to their loans. With a successful exit for 56/62 of the loans, and the other 6 projects still in progress, Roma undoubtedly made the correct decision.

The key to their success starts from managing a team of experienced advisors with an understanding of the marketplace. With any project, you’re likely to face some difficulty – but Roma encourage you to contact them when you encounter any problems. It’s this flexibility that enables Roma to work with you and find a solution to any problem.

At the end of the day, Roma’s money is tied up in the project too, so they want the best outcome for you, the lender and the project.

Short-Term

One of the key appeals of bridging finance is speed. Within an hour, Roma can provide a decision on a loan in principle. Of course, this depends on typical factors, such as having a good understanding of the customer, project and the exit strategy. But if all these boxes are ticked, you’re usually good to go.

However, often purchasing the property is only the half of it, as they often need severe TLC.  Luckily, through Roma’s offering, the finance can also be used for refurbishment – and this is whether it’s light (less than 100% of purchase price), medium (around 100%), or heavy (over 100%).

Buy-to-Let

One of Roma’s main goals is to help individuals and their families create wealth their business, and investment properties are a fantastic way of doing this. If you’re thinking a bit longer term than standard bridging, Roma Finance offer Buy-to-Let finance, and this can be on a 5-year term solution.

Still a reasonably new Roma offering, for this loan, there’s no minimum income requirement – and it can be used for an array of property types such as Buy-to-Lets, HMOs, Holiday Lets and Serviced Accommodation.

Nick (Roma) proposed in this section, the customer for life proposition through this type of finance. The properties can be a ground up development, and as soon as they’re wind and watertight, they can be flipped into a 5 year term product, kept in your portfolio or refinanced – all in a very safe environment.

And that’s your lot! You can learn more about Roma Finance here