Proplend hails November as record month
Proplend has said that November was its best ever month for lending, both in volume and number of loans.
The peer-to-peer commercial property lender said in its latest investor newsletter that it had five loans repay in November, bringing its year-to-date total to 28 loans, repaying £24.3m.
Of a total of 72 active loans, Proplend said five loans were repaid and four were past term, while out of a total of 68 commercial mortgages, it has four repaid and two past term. Of four commercial and VAT bridges, one has been repaid and two are past term.
“A huge thank you to all our lenders for your continued confidence in the Proplend product offering,” the firm said. “And to top it off, the latest loan Tipton, was our 200th loan funded!”
Proplend has funded more than £168m of loans since launching in 2014.
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Elsewhere, Proplend made reference to the recent announcement that Assetz Capital has restricted withdrawals from its access accounts after withdrawals outpaced new investment.
“We know that many of our lenders hold accounts across several P2P platforms,” it said. “We were disheartened to learn that one has taken the decision to restrict lender withdrawals, citing the requirement to maintain sufficient funds on the platform in order to ensure that committed property developments loans remain fully funded.”
Proplend does not offer development funding. It argued in the newsletter that the reason for this was that it had never felt it was a suitable product for the traditional P2P funding model.
Instead Proplend argued it remains focused on commercial property loans because it lends against day one value, and the loan goes out as a lump sum with no further drawdowns, reducing the risks of unforeseen circumstances increasing the risk to the lender.
“We cannot claim that Proplend, our niche in commercial property lending or business model is perfect but we made a clear statement by not going down the property development funding route,” it said. “Whilst in most cases it offers lenders higher returns but in turn it exposes them to a very different risk profile.”
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