LONDON, UK. September 11th, 2026 – Property investors and developers could be leaving substantial borrowing capacity on the table by failing to compare lenders, according to new research from Brickflow, the UK’s leading specialist property finance comparison platform.
The report, titled “The UK’s Most Expensive Mistakes“, demonstrates the breadth of lending terms available across the UK market and examines how manual approaches to sourcing finance can put pressure on cash flow and restrict the ability of investors and developers to grow their property pipelines.
Brickflow analysed 300 simulated searches across bridging loans, commercial mortgages, and development finance, assessing how different UK lenders responded to the same borrowing requirements.
On a £1.4m purchase, the research identified an average £250,000 difference in net loan between manually sourcing lenders and using a comparison site. The difference reached £306,000 on a £1.5m commercial mortgage purchase and £842,000 on development finance for a £3.7m project with a £5.2m GDV.
The trend appeared across every product and asset class included in the research. In bridging finance, the smallest difference identified anywhere in the dataset was £55,000, while pure residential purchases produced an average gap of more than £251,000.
For bridging finance on a £1.4m residential purchase in London, the highest net loan was £979,265, compared with £646,106 from the least competitive lender. The £333,159 difference represents a 52% greater advance from one lender compared with another against exactly the same asset.
For commercial mortgages, based on a £1.5m retail purchase in the North West, lenders offered between £1,125,000 and £750,000. The £375,000 variance means the borrower securing the more competitive loan could require 50% less deposit.
For development finance on a £3.7m residential project in Wales with a £5.2m GDV, the strongest lender advanced £3,371,262, compared with £2,340,936 from the least competitive lender. The £1,030,326 difference on the same scheme equates to 94% higher ROCE for the investor securing the better terms.
The report further explores the long-term consequences of these differences. On the £3.7m development example, deposits ranged from £450,000 to £1.4m depending on the lender. An investor starting with £1.4m of equity could therefore fund three projects by securing the most competitive terms, whereas accepting the least competitive finance would require the full £1.4m for one project. Over a career, the modelling suggests this could result in 30 completed projects compared with 10.
Ian Humphreys, CEO of Brickflow, said: “Looking at a single lender or a handful of lenders is the industry standard for many borrowers and brokers not using technology. The reality is that this manual approach is costly. Borrowers can tie up hundreds of thousands of pounds in unnecessary equity on every deal by sourcing finance manually.
“If that capital were freed up and reinvested, the additional property transactions completed each year could be substantial. Manual loan sourcing is holding brokers and their clients back. We built Brickflow to help brokers close more deals for their clients, with less capital tied up in each one.”
The full report, including methodology and full data breakdowns, is available here.
