Bridgit Blueprint: Navigating Bridging With Confidence

‍Welcome to the Bridgit Blueprint, your monthly dose of practical tools to help you tap into the power of bridging finance as a broker.

This Month Colin Bentley, Head of Lending at Bridgit shares his strategies to harness the power of bridging finance and help customers take their next property steps.

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Expert tips: Four ways to maximise the benefits of bridging for your clients.

While many Australian brokers see bridging as a valuable solution, some hesitations still remain amongst the community. The reality is that with the right lender, bridging finance can be a powerful tool for brokers to support clients looking to secure their next property.

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"To kick off FY25 we have seen an increase of over 350% in bridging applications from Mortgage Brokers in Australia compared to the same period last year."

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Colin Bentley, Head of Lending shares four key strategies to help brokers confidently present it as a valuable solution to clients.

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1. Understand the ideal client profile

An ideal bridging loan customer is an individual or family that has built up some equity in their property or properties, is keen to make their next step and looking to sell a property within 6-12 months.

For brokers, this might be a larger portion of their existing customer base than they might expect.

It is a solution that can benefit anyone looking to downsize,upsize, rightsize and purchase community homes. Plus it can be a powerful tool for a property investor to make transactions utilising their portfolio and equity.

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2. Highlight the safeguards to support the customer

A common question among brokers is whether bridging finance poses a risk to customers if a property’s price or sale timing doesn’t go as planned.

The best lenders have due diligence processes in place such as robust credit assessments, valuation shadings and define alternative exit strategies to ensure bridging finance is only offered when it's the right fit for the customer.

Here are some of the key strategies we use at Bridgit to ensure our customers have great outcomes:

• We assess each customer’s full income, credit history checks and equity position in their existing property at the time of application to ensure end debt can be serviced, even if the property sells for less than predicted.
• On each application we apply shading to property values as well as APRA servicing rates to ensure the customer can exit the loan successfully, and meet the assessment criteria of a long term lender.
• We build conditions into the loan which step out the requirements for a customer to sell their home and the required timeframe, this ensures the customer has time to discharge or refinance, plus it allows us to ensure we are supporting the customer throughout this process.

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3. Working with a specialist lender

Accessing specialised loan types, like bridging loans, can often be slow and cumbersome when it is an add on product. You might not deal with the experts or it could take considerable time to get to an outcome.

Working with a non-bank lender that specialises in bridging finance, such as Bridgit, provides access to dedicated experts and market-leading tech that can guide brokers and clients through the process smoothly.

We know that speed is a critical factor, we’ve built all our own tech for bridging specifically, meaning we provide a simple online application process that takes just a few minutes to complete, provide instant bridging scenario workshopping, 24 hour approvals and can meet the demands of quick settlements. This makes the broker and customers' lives easier.

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4. Understand the benefits of bridging finance

Bridging loans can be a great choice to support all types of homeowners looking to secure their next property move. Bridging offers increased flexibility, whether the client is upsizing, downsizing or anything in between.

In a fast moving market, clients utilising bridging can avoid temporary accommodation costs after selling first, jump on property opportunities even when they haven’t sold yet, take their time finding the perfect new home without being rushed or out of the market, and finally remove the risk of delayed settlement.

By highlighting these benefits to clients, brokers can demonstrate how bridging finance can work in their favour and provide it as an option for them to consider it when making their next move.

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Broker action plan: How to prepare your client for a bridging loan application

Use some vetting questions to assess whether a homeowner is likely a good fit for a bridging loan:

• What is your equity position like in your property?
• Do you own any other properties?
• Have you sold your home yet, if not, what stage of the process are you?
• Are you upsizing or downsizing?

Want to learn more?

Ready to boost the lifetime value of your book and support your clients to make their next property move? Bridgit’s bridging loan is a powerful solution to add to your toolkit.

Schedule a call with our team to learn more about Bridging finance with our team today.

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*Source: A 2024 research study commissioned by Bridgit of 255 active Australian residential mortgage brokers.

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