Shojin to offer first charge development finance
Shojin Property Partners is set to expand into first charge development finance within the next few months to become a one-stop shop for developers.
Chief executive Jatin Ondhia (pictured) said the peer-to-peer property lending platform specialises in providing equity or mezzanine junior finance for mid-market developers but is planning to start providing the senior first charge facility to save developers time and money.
He said this would mean that a developer could go to Shojin Property Partners for senior and junior funding and just pay one set of legal and valuation fees, rather than going to two different lenders and paying separate legal and valuation fees to both.
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Ondhia said the platform hopes to launch into senior funding formally over the next two to three months and said this will likely be funded by family offices or institutions but may be opened up to individual lenders too.
“We’re looking to add a senior funding line to what we do, it’s not because we want to be a senior lender, it’s not our core market, we like where we are, it’s to improve efficiency,” he said.
“If they come to us, their costs would go down, adding to their bottom line, and it cuts out the hassle of having to work with others. It will be a game changer.”
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Ondhia also said that he has seen a rising demand for mezzanine finance.
“This is always our core market,” he said.
“It doesn’t surprise me that other senior lenders move to mezzanine because the risk return profile is just so much better. We’re seeing increased demand due to greater awareness of the different ways of structuring development funding.”
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