Glenhawk targets £100m of lending in 2019

The property finance platform plans to more than double its loan book despite UK house prices grinding to a halt.

Commercial and residential property business Glenhawk celebrated its first year of trading by targeting £100m of loans in 2019.

The London-based finance platform announced the target after revealing that it lent £40m over the last 13 months, with zero defaults.

The business, which has Rightmove founder Harry Hill as a non-executive director, secured a £75m funding line from Shawbrook Bank and Insight Investment last September.

Glenhawk’s anniversary comes amid a difficult time for the UK homes market. The British house prices grew at annual growth of just 0.1% in January due to Brexit uncertainty, the slowest in six years, according to the country’s largest mortgage provider Nationwide.

However, Glenhawk founder and chief executive Guy Harrington (pictured) said: “This year has started well and with the profile of those looking to access the real estate debt finance market continually evolving, combined with the strangling effect that wider macro uncertainty is having on the more traditional sources of funding, we are ideally placed to both significantly grow our existing offering, whilst successfully expanding our product range.”

Harrington added that the platform has applied to become an Financial Conduct Authority regulated lender, which later this year will “allow us to focus on the £1.4trn homeowner mortgages and later life products markets, which are both ripe for disruption”.

Glenhawk provides short-term loans, ranging from £300,000 to £3m, across residential and commercial properties mainly in the South of England and the Midlands.

It added its £40m of lending over the last 13 months was split across 70 loans, 52 per cent of which are secured against residential assets, and 22 per cent secured against mixed and commercial assets.