Industrial and warehouse mortgages.

Owner-occupier or investment: which industrial mortgage you need

The first question on any industrial unit is who uses it, because it decides how the loan is underwritten.

Owner-occupier. Your business trades from the unit — a workshop, a distribution base, a manufacturing or storage facility. The lender underwrites your trading performance, with the building as security rather than the source of repayment. For an established business, this is often the cheapest way to stop paying rent and own the premises.

Investment. You let the unit to a tenant. The lender underwrites the rent, the tenant covenant and the lease — length, break clauses and the strength of the occupier all feed directly into the leverage and the rate. This is assessed exactly like a commercial investment mortgage, on the income rather than on you.

Multi-let estates sit slightly apart again: the loan is sized on the aggregate rent roll and the spread of tenants, and diversified income across several solid covenants is often viewed more favourably than a single-let asset resting on one.

How lenders read an industrial asset

Beyond who occupies it, four things move an industrial or warehouse valuation and therefore the loan:

• Location and access. Proximity to motorway and logistics corridors, and the quality of road access and the yard, drive both value and lettability.
• Building specification. Eaves height, loading doors, floor loading, power supply and yard depth decide which occupiers a unit can serve — modern logistics specification commands a premium.
• Covenant and lease on a let asset. A strong tenant on a long lease can lift both the leverage and the pricing; a short unexpired term does the opposite.
• Obsolescence and void risk. Older or over-specialised units carry re-letting risk that lenders price for, even at attractive yields.

Industrial and logistics has been one of the more resilient corners of the commercial market, and lender appetite reflects that — but appetite still varies sharply by spec and location, which is where whole-of-market access earns its keep.

Light industrial, warehousing, trade counters and logistics

We arrange term finance across the full industrial range: light-industrial and workshop units, distribution and storage warehousing, trade-counter and roadside units, manufacturing premises, and multi-let industrial estates. The asset type shapes the lender shortlist and the stress test; it is rarely the reason a sound deal fails.

Refurbish, let, then refinance

A tired or vacant industrial unit often does not qualify for a term facility on day one, because a term lender lends against proven income and there is not yet any. The usual route is a bridge to buy and refurbish or re-let the unit, then a commercial mortgage once the income is evidenced — the uplift from a repositioned asset creating the equity for the term facility. If you are mid-bridge with us, the exit is packaged from the file we already hold.

Industrial & warehouse mortgage FAQs