Brexit has not rocked appetite for development finance, Graeme Alfille-Cook, head of developers at Lloyds Banking Group said yesterday.
Speaking at the annual Association of Property Lenders conference, Alfille-Cook (pictured) said that risk appetite and metrics for development finance have been stable since the referendum.
There had been a noticeable slowdown since before Brexit and the referendum “just exacerbated it”.
He said: “We were already naturally coming off the peak of the seven-year cycle.”
Andy Rogers, group treasurer of Frogmore, said that the impact of the Brexit vote in the short-term had been overplayed.
He added that development finance for commercial real estate had been tightened, although this was largely because of regulations that predated the referendum.
Lenders had more of a “tick box mentality” being cautious with where they put their money. Since development finance is riskier than investment finance, plans could be written off as speculative under more stringent regulations.
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