Development finance start-up raises £600,000

A property-focused fintech start-up has raised £600,000 to help developers structure their finance. Real estate investor RO Group led the investment round, alongside Sibner Capital and former Foxtons boss Peter Rollings. The five-year-old sqft.capital acts as a comparison tool for development finance, aiming to offer developers a quicker, more transparent route to structuring their development finance. The data-backed platform filters and then presents the most appropriate lenders and investors for a particular development, allowing developers to essentially be their own brokers. On the flip side of that, it also helps debt and equity lenders to better visualise and assess data for profitable deals. Tom Wolfe, chief executive at sqft.capital, said: “Historically, lenders have been in charge of the financing process, with the borrower at the end of a long chain. In many industries, however, traditional power structures have been turned on their heads; from insurance to utilities, groceries, and ticketing, tech has come a long way to now place the consumer firmly in charge. “The development finance industry had long been resistant to change, with cumbersome processes leading to opaque routes to funding. Our digital platform is transformative and places the power to model and access lenders firmly in the hands of property developers.” The majority of the raise will be used as growth capital to develop and launch the company’s technology platform. Edward Rowlandson, group managing director at RO, added: “As owners of a diverse portfolio of assets, including all forms of real estate, we are acutely aware of the development finance cycle and its inherent inefficiencies. We have been looking for a technology solution and having spent much valuable time with Tom and his team, we are impressed by the platform they have built. It filters out the noise and is one of the most efficient ways to finance development that we have seen to date.”   To send feedback, e-mail piers.wehner@eg.co.uk or tweet @PiersWehner or @EGPropertyNews Image by Tom Nicholson/LNP/Shutterstock