While the lender’s entry into the bridging market will initially be with a selected panel of brokers, the 0.44% rate is considered to be market leading. 

Chris Treadwell, head of Enness Commercial, expected InterBay to do a fair amount of new business with its product. 

Enness has been selected as one of the brokers chosen to distribute InterBay’s bridging product.

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Meanwhile, Brightstar has been part of the pilot for InterBay’s bridging product for the past three months and has assisted the lender’s launch into bridging. 

“With rates from 0.44%, Interbay has come to market with aggressive pricing that represents some of the cheapest money in the sector,” Kit Thompson, director of short-term lending and development finance at Brightstar, told Bridging & Commercial. 

“Catering for both standard bridging, light and heavy refurb, plus resident, mixed-use and commercial property assets they also cover a wide range of property types. 

“We have completed a number of transactions during the pilot and found InterBay to [be] responsive to feedback to improve the proposition and make the process as slick as possible, appreciating that it is not just about pricing, but also service.”

How will InterBay’s launch impact other bridging lenders? 

Michael Dean, principal at Avamore Capital, said InterBay’s product looked very attractive, but that the devil would be in the detail.

“We were recently refinanced by a low-rate bridge lender who offered the customer 0.49% pcm initially on a 25% LTV deal, but when it came to drawdown, the goalposts were moved to 0.75% pcm, so the customer may as well have stayed with us.” 

Looking at the impact InterBay’s launch will have on the market, Michael felt that this was yet another market entrant looking to enter the vanilla sector, which would force those offering low rates to cut them further.

“For those of us in the value-add and service sector of the bridging market this should not have a material bearing on our activities, unless it forces the vanilla lenders to go up the risk curve, but I don’t see that happening right now. 

“If anything, we are seeing pull-back on LTV from some of our partners that have enabled our higher leverage deals.”

Kit didn’t think InterBay’s arrival would impact more established lenders.

“With a number of lenders already having reduced pricing and offering cheap rates, I do not think that the launch of InterBay products will cause more established lenders to drop rates initially. 

“If the competition notices a considerable drop in lending and as a [result] loses business, then it may be a different story, but I do not believe there will be any initial knee-jerk reactions by other lenders.”