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Are property sales completing quickly enough to repay bridging loans?

ended 10. September 2026

The latest RICS Residential Market Survey shows buyer enquiries and agreed sales moving away from their recent lows, although both measures remain negative and the recovery is described as fragile.

Bridging Loan Directory is examining whether this apparent stabilisation is translating into properties selling and completing quickly enough for borrowers relying on a sale to repay bridging finance.

We would like to hear from bridging lenders, brokers, estate agents, landlords and property investors with recent first-hand experience.

Are sale-led bridging exits becoming more reliable, or are borrowers still facing longer marketing periods, extensions, additional interest or a change of repayment strategy?

Recent anonymised examples are particularly useful. Please include where possible:

  • the property type and approximate location;
  • when it was marketed;
  • the expected and actual sale or completion period;
  • whether the bridging loan was extended or restructured;
  • any financial consequence; and
  • the eventual outcome or current position.

Responses of around 100–200 words would be helpful.

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Tony SanchezVerified
Founder at Bridging Loan Directory
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Nouran MoustafaVerified
Practice Principal & IFA at Roxton Wealth
The market may be stabilising, but I would not call sale-led bridging exits reliable yet.

The danger is borrowers seeing slightly better enquiry data and assuming that means their property will sell on schedule. It does not. A bridge still becomes expensive very quickly if a three-month sale turns into six months, especially once extension fees, extra interest and price reductions start stacking up.

What I am seeing is lenders and brokers becoming much more forensic about the exit: realistic asking price, local demand, comparable sales and what happens if the buyer disappears at exchange.

My rule is simple: if the bridge only works because the property *must* sell at full asking price within 12 weeks, the exit is too fragile.

A recovering market can help. It should never be the repayment strategy.
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Evren ErginVerified
Founder And Developer at ValuQ
A sale-led exit is workable, but only if the bridge term is set against how long a sale actually takes rather than how long everyone hopes it will. HM Revenue and Customs notes that completions typically arrive two to four months after an initial offer, and that is before the marketing period needed to find the buyer. With the RICS survey still showing new buyer enquiries at a net balance of minus 28%, that marketing period is the part most likely to stretch.

Volumes confirm the picture. HMRC recorded 96,710 UK residential transactions in July 2026, 1% below July 2025 and 2% below June. Sales are happening, but not quickly and not in growing numbers. On a twelve-month bridge, a property that takes four months to find a buyer and a further three to complete leaves little margin for a survey issue or a chain delay. Set the exit on the local time to sell for that property type, keep a refinance route open as the second option, and review it well before the term ends.
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Iain ThompsonVerified
Director at Evolve Finance
While the RICS survey suggests a fragile stabilization, the reality on the ground is that sale-led bridging exits remain heavily congested. Mainstream retail transaction times are still stretching, meaning developers relying on a standard open-market sale to redeem short-term debt are consistently hitting a timeline wall.

This friction is driving a sharp reliance on restructuring rather than relying on organic sales completions. Because properties are taking longer to cross the finish line, developers are routinely considering development exit finance or agreed extensions rather than run the risk of extra months of rolled-up penalty interest, heavily eroding final project margins.