Irfan, a past executive leader at Canada’s largest bank, got to know about Swoop when he was helping our company expand from the UK and Ireland into North America.
While working with us, Irfan was able to gain a deeper understanding of Swoop’s offering and saw the value that it offered to business owners looking to compare the best financial products for their specific needs.
Irfan’s own business interest lay in acquiring commercial property in Britain. Knowing that Swoop had an established business in the UK, Irfan saw an opportunity to leverage Swoop’s marketplace of funders and put the platform to the test. As Daire Burke, Head of North America at Swoop says, there were a few issues in the way:
“Irfan is not resident in the UK and his co-buyer didn’t have formal real estate experience. That said, they were from a family with a history of real estate investment and had been working alongside family members to gain experience for several years. The properties they were looking at were classified as ‘high street retail’ by several lenders, which limited their appeal. This was despite their location in a highly desirable and affluent area of the country.”
The properties that Irfan and his co-buyer were looking at were occupied by several different tenants and a number of the leases were due to expire within the next two years. Daire says:
“Whilst this presented an opportunity to renegotiate rents in the near future, lenders typically seek a minimum of five years remaining. To add some level of complexity, there was also a vendor loan for an element of the deposit, which also ruled out several lenders.”
Where the banks feared to tread, Swoop was determined to find a solution, especially as we were working with an experienced real estate investor and the properties were providing a strong yield with scope to further enhance this over time. Irfan had struggled to find UK lenders that were able to offer the funding he needed. Happily, Swoop matched him with a five-year facility on competitive terms.
Today, Irfan and his co-buyer are excited to consolidate and grow their commercial property business. Swoop is continuing to win friends and customers across the US and Canada. And as Daire says, “If you have a solid plan, whatever your background, wherever you are, if there’s a lender out there willing to work with you, we’ll pull out all the stops to make it happen.”
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