Brokers sourcing property finance manually could be leaving clients more than £1m in leverage short on a single deal, according to research published by Brickflow, which operates a specialist property finance comparison platform.
The report, titled "The UK's Most Expensive Mistakes", analysed 300 simulated finance searches across bridging loans, commercial mortgages, and development finance. Brickflow applied identical borrowing scenarios to multiple UK lenders and compared the resulting loan terms, finding wide variation in net loan offers across all three product types.
The implications for broker clients are most pronounced in development finance. On a simulated £3.7m residential project with a £5.2m GDV in Wales, the most competitive lender advanced £3,371,262 against £2,340,936 from the least competitive, a gap of £1,030,326 on an identical case. Brickflow's modelling puts the ROCE differential at 94% in favour of the client who secured the better terms.
Bridging finance shows a similar pattern. On a simulated £1.4m residential purchase in London, the most competitive net loan reached £979,265 while the least competitive came in at £646,106. That £333,159 gap means one lender was prepared to advance 52% more than another against the same asset. Across the bridging dataset, the smallest single gap recorded was £55,000, with pure residential purchases averaging a difference of more than £251,000.
For commercial mortgage cases, a simulated £1.5m retail purchase in the North West produced net loan offers ranging from £1,125,000 down to £750,000. Brickflow calculates that the £375,000 difference translates into a 50% smaller deposit for the client who compared the market.
The report also models the long-term compounding effect on client portfolios. On the £3.7m development scenario, the lowest deposit required by any lender was £450,000; the highest was £1.4m on the same case.
Starting from equal equity of £1.4m, Brickflow's model shows a client on the most competitive terms could deploy that capital across three simultaneous projects, while a client on the least competitive terms would commit it entirely to one. Repeated over a career, the firm suggests that gap represents the difference between 30 completed projects and 10.
Ian Humphreys, chief executive of Brickflow (pictured), said: "Looking at a single lender or a handful of lenders is the industry standard for many borrowers and brokers not using technology. The reality is that this manual approach is costly. Borrowers can tie up hundreds of thousands of pounds in unnecessary equity on every deal by sourcing finance manually.
"If that capital were freed up and reinvested, the additional property transactions completed each year could be substantial. Manual loan sourcing is holding brokers and their clients back. We built Brickflow to help brokers close more deals for their clients, with less capital tied up in each one."
