Holden Capital Partners’ new head of brokerage, Callum Short, said one of his core aims will be to spearhead growth in the specialist non-bank lender’s broker network over the next one to two years.
With a focus on commercial finance for developer clients, Holden Capital Partners has grown out of the southeast Queensland market to service the broader eastern seaboard over the last five years.
Short (pictured above) said although the company had “a solid base of brokers nationally”, it would look to expand its introducer network across Australia, with a particular focus on Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
“We value the role brokers play in our business and for our clients – they are really integral to the transaction, and integral to the deal flow and growth of our business,” Short said. “We have a solid range of brokers throughout the country and the plan is to expand our referral network and broker network continually and significantly over the next two years.”
Commercial finance for development deals
Short said development finance was an “interesting landscape” at the moment, with an economic environment that included both rising interest rates and increasing construction prices.
Holden Capital Partners is focusing on deals such as land subdivisions, residential luxury builds and townhouse projects, and staying away from larger scale multi-residential developments.
“We are seeing loans with a time frame of six to 18 months as really being the sweet spot for us.”
Short said as COVID-19 ended, the market had seen the benefit of rising gross realisations on projects, and the ability of a lot of projects “to get out of the ground without too many disruptions”.
However he said now deals were slightly more constrained deals in terms of gross realisations.
“Sponsors and developers are needing to stay much more on top of what the market is to make sure everything is stacking up compared with 12 months ago.”
Appetite from investors still strong
Holden Capital Partners is set to settle over $50 million across 10 transactions in the first quarter of 2023. Since 2017, it has completed loan facilities exceeding $250m across more than 70 projects.
During that time its funding capacity has also grown, and it now offers commercial loans up to a value of $15m, which it provides through its investor-backed ExpressFUND.
Short said there were a lot of deals still available and Holden Capital Partners had willing investors.
“There are a lot of quality deals in the market and we and our investors have a strong appetite, often there just needs to be more due diligence put in during changing market conditions,” he said.
Short has over 10 years of experience in commercial property and finance and was formerly a project partner at East Coast Invest before joining Holden Capital Partners as a consultant in 2020.
He stepped into the head of brokerage role for the business late last year.
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