Hilltop Credit Stream, the real estate credit funding and management platform launched in August by Hilltop Credit Partners Limited (“Hilltop”), a leading real estate credit investment manager, has generated over £1 billion of SME residential development loan applications during its first four months. Capitalising on the ongoing market retrenchment from both more traditional and newer sources of financing caused by rising funding costs and challenges managing existing loan books, the platform is currently expected to evaluate over £4 billion of loans in 2023, a 400% increase on business plan.

Hilltop Credit Stream is a software application for borrower onboarding and portfolio management which streamlines the development loan application to access institutional funds. Allowing borrowers to access funding up to three times faster than the traditional process and providing more transparency on the timeline, £150 million of the £1.1 bn of enquiries generated between August and October have been approved under the 3-stage application process.

Hilltop Credit Partners has enjoyed a strong second half of the year, and highlights include a £4.6 million acquisition and development loan to Pascoe Homes, a developer of affordable, modern and eco-friendly homes. It will fund the delivery of 388 private residential apartments in the Victoria Riverside area of Leeds, a brownfield regeneration area, with 60% of the development’s units expected to be priced below regional Help-to-Buy thresholds.

In September, Hilltop published the latest edition of its Residential Market Report, which concluded that whilst UK house prices have now increased by over 25% since the start of Covid-19, stretched affordability, rising mortgage rates, and an economic slowdown are weighing on the near-term outlook. Just 216,000 new homes were supplied in 2020/21, significantly down on the government’s 300,000 target.

Paul Oberschneider, CEO of Hilltop Credit Partners, commented: “SME borrowers, the lifeblood of the UK housing market, remain hugely underserved by lenders. Whilst the for-sale market is likely to slow in a higher interest rate environment, the structural need for new house building in the UK, and capital to fund it, remains intact. Whilst remaining methodical in our approach, we will support entrepreneurial clients with our flexibility, competitive pricing and certainty of funding, to ensure they can deliver affordable, high quality, sustainable homes in strategic locations across the UK.

Justin Galvin, CTO, Hilltop Credit Partners, added: “The incredible demand we have witnessed in the 4 months since launching Hilltop Credit Stream, demonstrates the robustness of the UK development finance landscape and the borrower appetite for a streamlined development loan application to access institutional funds. Harnessing the power of fintech in tandem with a best-in-class customer-centric proposition has enabled us to transform the underwriting process and set a new standard for the alternative lending sector. It also allows us to provide our investment partners with real time data, which will materially enhance any future capital raising ambitions.”