Refurbishment funding for UK businesses

The first fork in the road is whether the work is cosmetic or structural. A new floor, a repaint, a bar rebuild and a kitchen line are fit-out, and they fund like equipment: 22 of our lenders fund a shop or office fit-out as an asset (checked September 2026). Knock a wall out, change the use class or add a floor and you are in property lending, where 35 of the 53 bridging lenders on our panel will fund heavy refurbishment.

That distinction decides the price. Fit-out on an unsecured facility at £50,000 draws on 47 lenders over terms of 1 to 120 months, with a median published floor of 17% a year (checked September 2026). Bridging is priced monthly instead. Across the bridging panel, rates at 70% loan to value run 0.6% to 2% a month with a median of 0.9%, on top of an arrangement fee of 1% to 4% (checked September 2026).

A useful sub-criterion if the building is a wreck: 23 of the bridging panel will lend against value rather than purchase price, which matters when you have bought something under the market. 26 will accept an automated valuation, which can take a fortnight out of the timetable.

Bridging tariffs are where refurbishment budgets quietly go wrong, and the published detail varies enormously. Each lender sets its own minimum rate by loan size and loan-to-value band, and its own day-one charges, so on a smaller bridge the fees can take a noticeable share of the facility before a single month of interest is paid. MT Finance publishes its full tariff and lends in England and Wales only; read the tariff before the budget is set.

Minimum loan sizes rule people out before rates do. Together will write a bridge from £26,000, MT Finance from £50,000, and Glenhawk from £250,000 across its whole range after a deliberate decision in January 2025 to raise its floors. Glenhawk also caps any loan of six months or less at 60% loan to value, and requires a twelve-month minimum term above that, so a borrower wanting 70% for three months cannot have it from them at any price.

Then there is what happens if the job overruns, which on refurbishment it often does. A Together bridge that runs past twelve months moves onto the lender's published extension terms, and Glenhawk and Roma Finance each publish their own extension and post-completion terms in their tariffs. The extension terms are the part of a tariff to read first on a refurbishment, because the job is the thing most likely to run long.

We build the overrun into the exit before anyone signs. A twelve-month facility on a six-month job costs more in interest and saves the extension fee and the argument. That is the trade, and the lender still makes its own decision.