Commercial Property: Why Banks Take 12 Weeks and Bridging Takes 12 Days

You've found a commercial property at the right price. The vendor wants to exchange quickly — there's another buyer circling. You call your bank. They tell you the application will take 6-8 weeks to process, they'll need a full valuation, environmental reports, tenant covenant assessments, and credit committee approval. Realistically, you're looking at 10-12 weeks to completion.

By then, the deal is gone.

Why Banks Are Slow on Commercial

It's not that banks are incompetent. Their processes exist for good reasons — regulatory compliance, risk management, portfolio diversification rules. But those processes are designed for a world where 3 months to complete a commercial mortgage is considered normal.

The typical bank commercial mortgage process involves:

• Initial application and document gathering (1-2 weeks)
• Valuation instruction and completion (2-3 weeks)
• Underwriting and credit committee (2-3 weeks)
• Legal due diligence and documentation (2-4 weeks)
• Conditions precedent and final checks (1-2 weeks)

Each stage has its own bottleneck. The valuer is backed up. Credit committee meets fortnightly. The bank's solicitors are handling 50 other files. Nobody is treating your deal as urgent because, from the bank's perspective, it isn't.

How Bridging Compresses the Timeline

A bridging lender operating on commercial property can typically move from enquiry to completion in 7-14 working days. Some can go faster. The difference isn't that they skip important steps — it's that they run them concurrently rather than sequentially, and their decision-making process is fundamentally faster.

• Same-day indicative terms. You know where you stand within hours, not weeks.
• Desktop or drive-by valuations for straightforward assets, completed in days rather than weeks.
• Delegated authority. Many bridging lenders empower individual underwriters to approve deals up to significant thresholds without a committee meeting.
• Dual representation. Using the same solicitor for both lender and borrower (where appropriate) saves weeks of back-and-forth.

The Bridge-to-Term Strategy

The most common approach for commercial property is to bridge the purchase, then refinance onto a commercial mortgage at leisure once you've completed. This gives you the speed to secure the deal, plus the long-term economics of a bank facility.

Yes, you'll pay a few months of bridging interest — but weigh that against the cost of losing the deal entirely, or the negotiating power that comes with being able to offer a 2-week completion. Vendors give preferential terms to buyers who can move quickly and with certainty.

What We See in Practice

A significant proportion of our commercial bridging work follows this pattern: a buyer who has bank finance in principle but can't wait for the process. Or an investor at auction who needs to complete in 28 days. Or a business acquiring their own premises where the vendor has set a completion deadline.

In every case, the bridging cost is a fraction of what the buyer would lose by missing the opportunity. If you need to move fast on a quick purchase, that's exactly what short-term finance is designed for.