Enquiries about commercial mortgage finance have jumped 44 per cent in the last month, according to broker Mortgages for Business.

The increase is down to increased confidence in the market, says the broker. One year on from the demise of Lehman Brothers, investors and businesses feel ready to re-enter the market.

Steve Olejnik, head of sales said: “The largest increase has been in placing traditional mortgages for trading businesses and commercial investments – but we’ve seen more HMOs, limited company buy to lets, residential developments and semi-commercial enquiries, too. Mortgages for Business have been dealing with commercial mortgages for the past 20 years and none of us have seen an uplift like this before.”

MD David Whittaker said: “This explosion in commercial business is the result of the recent run of house prices increases. Price rises are encouraging small developers to review projects that were not viable at the beginning of the summer. Suddenly, developers need to finance the purchase of sites to build properties on so they can have stock ready for sale in the summer of 2010.”

Whittaker added that most of the major high street lenders are still very risk-averse, and it’s been the boutique firms who are jump starting the commercial finance revival.

“We are experiencing this upswing because high street banks are unwilling to support new projects. They’re still trying to bolster their balance sheets, and demonstrate greater liquidity and return on funds. So borrowers are turning to specialists like us.

“Furthermore, our relationships with the main commercial lenders – including Aldermore – have really come through for us recently. This is funding that is not accessible to a large number of brokers. As a result, we’ve been placing a number of complicated deals that our peers haven’t been able to handle.”

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