Commercial Mortgages Manchester: What Mortgage Solutions's Latest Move Means for Borrowers

United Trust Bank has promoted Gene Clohessy into a newly created role as director of buy to let and bridging, according to Mortgage Solutions. The bank describes the appointment as part of its wider growth plans, putting a single senior figure in charge of two lending lines that increasingly overlap for property investors moving between short term finance and longer term buy to let holds.

It is a small internal change on paper, but it tells us something useful about where specialist lending is heading. Bridging rates from specialist lenders currently run from around 0.55% to 0.95% a month, with loan to value typically capped at 70% to 75%, while buy to let facilities for limited company borrowers start from about 5.5%, figures broadly in line with what Mortgage Solutions and other trade titles have reported across the specialist market this year. When a lender puts both products under one director rather than two separate heads, it usually means faster sign off on deals that straddle the two, such as a bridge to let where a borrower buys, refurbishes, then refinances onto a term facility without switching lender.

For Manchester commercial mortgage borrowers, that matters in practice. A city with as much conversion and refurbishment activity as Manchester, from ex office blocks turning into flats to HMOs being brought up to lettable standard, produces exactly the kind of deal that needs bridging and buy to let to work together rather than as two disconnected applications. A lender that has restructured its own team around that overlap is one worth having in the mix when we are placing a case, alongside the challenger banks and other specialist commercial lenders already active in the city.

Our desk treats moves like this as a signal to update, not overhaul, our lender panel. UTB was already a name we placed deals with; a dedicated director for BTL and bridging gives us a clearer route in for time sensitive cases and a better sense of appetite before we submit. Borrowers in the city do not need to know the internal structure of every lender we deal with, but they benefit from it when it shortens the gap between application and offer.

If you are weighing up a purchase, refinance, or refurbishment project in the city, our Commercial Mortgages Broker Manchester location page sets out the lender types, rate ranges, and deal structures we currently see working locally. Team changes like this one rarely make headlines outside the trade press, but they shape which lenders move fastest when a Manchester deal needs both a bridge and a term exit sorted at the same time. Get in touch with our desk before you commit to a structure, and we will tell you which lenders, including UTB, are the right fit for the numbers in front of you.