Emergency Bridging Loan

Emergency bridging loan: £700,000 auction completion in 6 days

Our client won a former care home at auction for £700,000, a building still registered under C2 use and occupied under an existing lease to a social housing provider. Auction terms gave just 6 days to complete, and arranging access for a full physical inspection within that window wasn’t possible.

We secured an auction bridging loan against a desktop valuation alone, completing within the 6-day auction deadline with no physical inspection required beforehand.

The scenario

Our client purchased a former care home at auction for £700,000. The property remained registered under C2 class use and was leased to a social housing provider at the time of purchase. As with any auction purchase, the completion date wasn’t negotiable: the client had 6 days from the fall of the hammer to complete, or risk losing their deposit and the property.

The challenges

1. Fixed completion deadline. Auction contracts don’t allow for delay. The client had just 6 days from the fall of the hammer to complete, or risk losing both the deposit and the property.
2. Restricted valuation access. The property was occupied under an existing lease to a social housing provider, and arranging access for a full physical inspection wasn’t possible within the timeframe, ruling out a standard inspection within the completion window.
3. No standard valuation route. With inspection off the table and the clock running, the case needed a lender willing to proceed on an alternative basis, something most standard bridging applications never have to consider.
4. Added legal complexity. The property’s C2 use class and its existing lease to a social housing provider meant this wasn’t a standard vacant auction purchase: both needed factoring into how the case was underwritten.

The solution

Because a full physical inspection wasn’t possible in the time available, the standard valuation route most lenders default to was ruled out. To keep the transaction on track, we arranged auction bridging finance agreed on the basis of a desktop valuation, with the lender accepting a physical valuation as a post-completion condition rather than a pre-completion requirement.

That structure meant the case could move at the pace the auction demanded, without disrupting the existing tenancy in place. It’s the kind of flexibility that separates a straightforward purchase from auction property finance built for genuinely unusual circumstances.

The outcome

The purchase completed within the auction deadline, with the physical valuation carried out shortly after completion, as agreed with the lender.

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