Property finance & commercial mortgage solicitors

Commercial mortgages & remortgages

Our commercial property team is able to offer an efficient and cost-effective service to assist clients with the completion of new commercial mortgages and remortgages.

The process of acting on your behalf in respect of a mortgage is similar to acting on a purchase.  We will carry out all the same title investigations and searches as if we are buying in order to ensure that the lender has full marketable title to the property in the event that it is repossessed.

Whereas a cash buyer may be willing to take a view on issues that arise on our title investigation a lender will often not take such a view and therefore will require all defects to rectified before they will agree to release funds.  As such completing on a commercial mortgage may take longer than a purchase given the approach of the lender. Therefore, care must especially be taken for a buyer who is contemplating obtaining funding for a property that is to be bought at auction as they will only have a set time to complete.  Therefore, we would strongly recommend that anyone contemplating buying at an auction should use our auction check service so that they are aware in advance of potential issues.

We also act for several lenders in providing a bespoke service to meet their needs.  To ensure that we meet and exceed their expectations we first liaise with them to a tailored service that maximises the use of our skill base and technology.

A remortgage is general where you already own the property and are changing lender, or even adding a further charge.  The work involved is the same as on a mortgage.

If you require any further assistance or have a query one of the team would be happy to discuss your requirements.

Personal guarantees

Often when a company obtains funding the lender will require that one or more of the owners and or directors of the business act as a guarantor to that loan.

We are able to provide a quick and cost-effective advice on personal guarantees.

Advice for a personal guarantee must be provided independently of the advice to the company, so you cannot use the same solicitor.  Most lenders will usually allow a different solicitor within the same firm to provide the advice to the individual, but this is not always the case so you would need to check. Further some lenders will require a face to face meeting rather than a video conference so again this will need to be checked.

A simple guarantee creates a secondary liability on the guarantor to fulfil the primary obligations of the borrower, in the event the borrower fails to do so. This means that if the underlying obligations of the borrower fall away, so does the guarantor's liability. However, in this case the Lender has included indemnity wording which also creates a primary obligation on the guarantor. This means that if, for any reason, the underlying agreement between the lender and borrower fails, the Lender can still rely on its indemnity. The lender can also pursue the guarantor straight away under the guarantee, without needing to pursue the borrower first, in the event the borrower defaults on its obligations under the loan. Ultimately the lender can cherry pick which enforcement option to take and, ultimately, who to pursue without any obligation to pursue a certain party first.

One of the most important things for a guarantor to consider is how much the lender will be able to pursue them for. The extent of the guarantor's liability under the guarantee will either be limited to a certain amount, or it will extend to the full balance owed (from time to time) by the borrower to the lender. The guarantor must be comfortable that they will be able to meet the full amount for which they are liable for as long as the guarantee is in force.

If you require any further assistance or have a query one of the team would be happy to discuss your requirements.

Commercial development funding

At Stephensons, the project facilities our team put in place typically range from as little as £80,000 to many millions, and we understand the importance of working to a time scales to put this funding in place. We aim to provide a flexible approach that is transparent in terms of our pricing, and where possible we seek to give clients control over their costs by providing a fixed fee.

Our recent work in this field includes: 

• We are currently advising on the refinance of a 14 property mixed use residential and commercial property portfolio worth in excess of £2 million, with the view to raising funds for further development projects.

• We have assisted in the smooth and efficient completion of a re-mortgage of 37 commercial property portfolio with a facility of £5.2 million thus providing our clients with a better finance package. 

• We have also assisted in the completion of a re-mortgage of 71 commercial property portfolio with a facility of £6.9 million. In this instance we were able to effect a quick completion with it taking place within 12 weeks from our initial instruction.

• We have also acted for lenders, including a bridging lender, taking between and 10 and 20 security instructions per month, with loans ranging form £80,000 to £500,000. For this lender we have set up a 24 hour online progress access system, where they can log on to our system and check the progress of all their transactions when they wish.

Our team of commercial property law solicitors are here for you at all touch points of the development process. For legal advice and support with any commercial properly issues, contact our team now on 01616 966 229 .